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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.
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