Sight-seeing around Aomori
Weather: mostly sunny with some periods of heavy cloud. Low of 14C in the morning, middle of the day was 25C, then 16C in the evening.
Distance: 430km
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Today was a day of great roads, some culture, and a major bad decision..
Woke up and got ready to go. It was still way too early for any museums or other things, so instead I planned a ride with various stops. First on the agenda was just some sights around Lake Towada, but this time the eastern shoreline. The road leading up to it was seriously gorgeous. Both literally and figuratively, as it wound its way along a small river in the bottom of a gorge. Extremely picturesque. Lucky I was quite early as there were already quite a few people around and it had the makings of becoming quite overcrowded later on. I even stopped for a bit of a hike alongside the river and some waterfalls.
Once at Lake Towada, my first stop was at a viewpoint and unlike the one from a few days ago, it was actually possible to see the lake from this one! It also had an infographic of the formation of the lake. Basically it was a huge caldera which collapsed, formed a lake, then later the volcano restarted and blew a very deep crater inside the existing larger crater, which then filled with water again. From the viewpoint it’s actually possible to see the two craters inlaid despite them being filled with water.
My next stop at Lake Towada was the statue of the maidens. This turned out to be at a major tourist hub and while there were quite a few people about, it wasn’t massively crowded. It’s a bit of a walk along the lake shore to the statue, which is pretty in itself with a little island just offshore. You can rent a swan-boat to paddle about.. I chose not to! The statue is actually not of maidens, but of a maiden with her reflection to represent the view one can see on a calm day in the lake.
From there I went back inland and headed to a stone circle from the Jomon era of Japan’s deep history. Most of this has long been destroyed, but in Aomori and Hookaido some remnants of this stone-age civilisation remain. The Jomon period is basically the neolithic, but the Japanese, of course, want to be special and so have categorised this period as something uniquely japanese.. The circles themselves are not as impressive as, for example, the stone circles in the UK, consisting primarily of fairly small stones arranged in various patterns. I’m sure an archeologist might be able to say more about it. Today they were holding a bit of a matsuri, but it hadn’t really kicked off yet and unfortunately I had some other things I wanted to do so didn’t stick around. I did get a free ride on a cherry-picker though to view the stone circles from above. They even got a guy specially out for me to explain in english, although it turned out he was learning german so that’s the language he decided to explain in.
My next stop was the Osarizawa copper mine, which turned out to be closed. Google had said as much, but all the tourist signage was up so I figured I’d try anyway although give this was closed, and the later misadventure today, I would have been far better off heading back to Aomori earlier and seeing some of the other sights which I had originally wanted to go and stop off at..
But given I was in this area, I went ahead with my plan of riding past the Subari Dam, some waterfalls, and over the Tsurubeotoshi Pass. There were few cars along this route even though the roads were pretty epic. As I got to the top of the pass, I found out why – a sign proclaiming the road to be closed, even though up to now it had none of the traditional hallmarks of a closed road such as leaf litter or disrepair. A couple of guys were camping at the top of the pass and said that yes, the road is closed to cars, but maybe a bike can get through. So it was either try, or make a major detour back the way I came and it was already getting dark..
So I pressed on and half-way to Lake Tsugaru discovered why the road was closed – it looks like it’s being completely redone, although there didn’t seem much active work happening at the moment. The tarmac stops and heavy gravel takes its place, with some construction equipment being around. Well, it was only 6km more to the next intersection, so I turned on my spotlights and pressed on. But it was all to no avail – just in front of the intersection a locked gate barred my way. I even tried to lay the bike on its side to push it under the gate, but it was just too big.. in the end there was nothing to it but to backtrack the entire way.
When I got back to the top of the pass the guys were taking photos of the stars – it really was an absolutely gorgeous spot up there! They even offered me some nihonshu and to let me stay the night with them so I wouldn’t have to ride back down in the dark, but as I had all my gear in the hotel I declined, as tempting as it was! So a very long dark ride back to the hotel ensued.. I really should have learned my lessons about closed roads by now!!
Finally back at the hotel, I had a nice hot soak and a cold beer before turning in..
