{"id":869,"date":"2026-09-21T21:25:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/?p=869"},"modified":"2026-09-28T08:03:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T08:03:49","slug":"silver-week-2026-day-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/2026\/09\/21\/silver-week-2026-day-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Silver Week 2026 – Day 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Shizukuishi (Iwate) to Hirosaki (Aomori)<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Weather:<\/strong> Mostly rainy, easing later
Distance:<\/strong> 336km<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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<< Previous Day<\/a> | Next Day >><\/a> | Photo Album<\/a> | Video<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Today was a day of epic roads but rain and fog..<\/p>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Woke up to rain again. Had a coffee and my apple from yesterday while slowly getting ready. The rain eased a bit, so I left, hoping for the best.<\/p>\r\n

Loop of Lake Tazawa. I was lucky, by the time I got here, the rain had pretty much finished. Very nice roads and views around the lake, the highlight being a golden statue of Tatsuko. Legend has it that in an effort to maintain her beauty forever she turned herself into a dragon and threw herself into the lake, in the process making it the deepest lake in Japan at over 420m.<\/p>\r\n

Since the weather had cleared I decided to detour over the Aspite Line instead of heading straight to Hirosaki. I had selected a silver mine as another potential waypoint, so I decided to check it out. But much to my dismay the weather moved in heavily. The road was awesome, the views presumably so, but apart from fog and rain there was little to see. The silver mine was another disappointment – a couple of crumbling apartment blocks slowly getting swallowed by vegetation and some sort of water treatment plant. So much for a museum or tour or anything really.<\/p>\r\n

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Since it was still raining heavily I stopped at a roadside area and, as luck would have it, there was a guy making coffee. Not only that, but he also had some cheesecake! It was one of the more interesting coffee’s I ever had, made in some sort of glass retort and it bubbles and gurgles through the tubing while its brewing.<\/p>\r\n

While having coffee I chatted with someone who recommended a local onsen, famous for its ramen, and as it was still raining and I was cold and there was not much else for me to do, I decided to head there for lunch. Unfortunately when I got there the restaurant was closed.. so were half the baths, but I still enjoyed the hot bath and sauna. One of the gents in the onsen told me about a waterfall in the area; I think he said there was a good restaurant there or something, but I didn’t quite understand him. Anyway, I had had enough and just wanted to get to my hotel, but on the way I saw a huge Tori gate and a sign with the name of the waterfall, so I ended up going there after all..<\/p>\r\n

It was a nice little detour and while not the most spectacular waterfall ever, it was still pretty nice with a little shirne along the way. No restaurant though lol.<\/p>\r\n

After the waterfall the weather had cleared enough that I decided to detour around the west side of Lake Towada. The lake is much larger than Lake Tazawa, but as the road is mostly in the forest it’s not really possible to see much of the lake. I did find one viewpoint as I was climbing out of the lake area, but it was built into tress so couldn’t see anything!<\/p>\r\n

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From there it was straight to my hotel which turned out to be a capsule hotel. It’s my first time to stay in one, so it’s a bit interesting.<\/p>\r\n

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Before turning in for the night I went to find some local food and ended up in a nearby Izakaya. I tried Igamenchi, which is chopped up fried squid and the local delicacy. I also had more local specialities in the form of dried cod with raw-egg dip, and sesame-butter crackers.<\/p>\r\n

Once I got back to my capsule hotel I went to the onsen before bed. It turns out this particular capsule hotel has one of the more famous onsen in all of Aomori, at least, according to a guy I chatted with for a bit. He’s a doctor and apparently a bit of a sauna\/onsen afficionado. He’s been to Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, looking for the best saunas. While I was there I was lucky enough to get a special sauna treat which apparently only happens a few times a month – an Aufguss cermony with tea leaves.<\/p>\r\n

That’s me done for the day.. oyasumi!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shizukuishi (Iwate) to Hirosaki (Aomori) Weather: Mostly rainy, easing laterDistance: 336km << Previous Day | Next Day >> | Photo Album | Video Woke up to rain again. Had a coffee and my apple from yesterday while slowly getting ready. The rain eased a bit, so I left, hoping for the best. Loop of Lake Tazawa. I was lucky, by the time I got here, the rain had pretty much finished. Very nice roads and views around the lake, the highlight being a golden statue of Tatsuko. Legend has it that in an effort to maintain her beauty forever she turned herself into a dragon and threw herself into the lake, in the process making it the deepest lake in Japan at over 420m. Since the weather had cleared I decided to detour over the Aspite Line instead of heading straight to Hirosaki. I had selected a silver mine as another potential waypoint, so I decided to check it out. But much to my dismay the weather moved in heavily. The road was awesome, the views presumably so, but apart from fog and rain there was little to see. The silver mine was another disappointment – a couple of crumbling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,41,22,1],"tags":[96,42,23],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-motorbike","category-travel","category-uncategorized","tag-japan","tag-motorbike-2","tag-travel-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}