Aomori Travel Video Guide

Aomori Travel Itinerary

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Honshu's most northerly city, AOMORI , sits at the bottom of Mutsu Bay, sheltered by the two claws of the Tsugaru and Shimokita peninsulas. It's a spacious, but rather characterless, city which has lost a good deal of its Hokkaido-bound visitors now that trains run straight through to Hakodate via the Seikan Tunnel . However, the crowds still turn up for Aomori's Nebuta Matsuri (Aug 2-7), one of Japan's biggest and rowdiest festivals , featuring giant illuminated floats and energetic dancing. It takes less than a day to cover Aomori's main sights, of which the most appealing is a park displaying nebuta floats, followed by a couple of decent museums of history and folkcraft.

Southwest of Aomori, the small town of Hirosaki has a number of

interesting historical sights around its once magnificent castle, which can be covered on a day-trip. Allow at least two days, however, to explore the Shimokita Tono , the axe-head peninsula lowering over Aomori from the east. Shimokita is dominated by the sacred Osore-zan, an eerie wasteland where souls hover between life and death, but the region also has some excellent coastal scenery and a hardy wildlife population, including the world's most northerly population of wild monkeys.

Your Tips For Aomori

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  Many Japanese see HOKKAIDO as an idyllic, unspoiled frontier - the perfect place to escape from industrialized Japan and get back in touch with nature. - Japan
  

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• Northern Honshu Japan Travel Videos
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  When the famous poet Matsuo Basho set out on his travels along the "narrow road to the deep north" in 1689, he commented, somewhat despondently, "I might as well be going to the ends of the earth. - Japan
  

• Central Honshu Japan Travel Videos
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• Western Honshu Japan Travel Videos
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  Also known as Chugoku , meaning "middle country", Western Honshu used to be at the centre of the Japanese nation, lying between the country's earliest settlements in Kyushu and the imperial city of Kyoto. - Japan
  

• Kyushu Japan Travel Videos
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  Lying off the south end of Honshu, Japan's third largest island, KYUSHU , is surrounded by a spray of smaller islands which trail off in a long arc across the East China Sea. - Japan
  

• Kansai Japan Travel Videos
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