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  • Good morning and welcome to Aomori Prefecture.

  • Aomori is located at the top of Honshu island, the main island in Japan.

  • I used to live near here and I absolutely love this area.

  • So I'm really excited to show it to you guys. This is actually the first day of a four day trip.

  • I'm going to be spending three days in Aomori

  • and then the last day I'm going to be heading up to Hokkaido for my first time.

  • So I think we're gonna have lots of fun.

  • Aomori Prefecture is famous for the summer festival, Nebuta.

  • Nebuta Festival takes place the first week of August every year

  • and there you can see these amazingly intricate, brightly colored lantern floats.

  • The floats are made of a wire frame and then they're covered in rice paper,

  • which is sealed together with a paraffin wax.

  • Let's try on a Nebuta hat.

  • Something like that.

  • Next, we're gonna try sticking the rice paper to the flip frame.

  • The less glue, the better..

  • apparently.

  • The paper squares are glued down one by one, and then the joints are sealed with paraffin wax.

  • And after that is all complete, then the painting can start.

  • Prime craftsmanship.

  • Aomori is famous for apples. We're in the gift shop right now.

  • And there are apple souvenirs everywhere. There's even fresh apples are in front of me here.

  • Right next to the Nebuta Museum is a store called A-Factory,

  • which has a huge selection of souvenirs from Aomori,

  • so if you're looking for a gift for your friends or family, this is probably the best place to get that.

  • We've been given a card with 900 yen on it

  • and we're gonna use this to get some sake tasting samples.

  • Where should we start?

  • It's 100 yen for the small one, so let's do that.

  • Cheers!

  • Next up is some fresh apple sherbet.

  • They have tons of different flavors, but because we're in Aomori, we need to try the apple.

  • Aomori is definitely the place to come for all things apple. Everything just tastes amazing.

  • So we just got in a taxi and we're...we're just gonna explore the area. We honestly have no idea where to go.

  • We found a park nearby, so we're gonna check out the park.

  • It's right on the coast of the ocean, so it should be pretty at least.

  • Taxi driver was just asking us what we're planning on doing there and I said "I have no idea,"

  • and he's like, "Well, there's nothing to do there."

  • But I don't know where else to go, so we're gonna start with the park and see what happens there.

  • [Music]

  • This park is great! I don't know what the taxi guy was talking about.

  • This would be a great place for a picnic. We're just saying.."We should have a picnic here, "

  • but we're going for dinner next, so we probably shouldn't eat anything.

  • So we're just outside in downtown Aomori now and we're heading for dinner

  • and we're going to a place called Ringo Bako (apple box). It's a shamisen bar.

  • They're gonna be playing shamisen in the background while we eat. It sounds really cool.

  • Wow!

  • It's nice!

  • One of the other girls just figured out why their restaurant is called "apple box"

  • All the tables and the benches are made from apple boxes.

  • That's really cute!

  • Arigatou Gozaimasu (Thank you)

  • Veggie appetizers. Menma (pickled bamboo shoots), my favorite!

  • [Shamisen Tuning]

  • [Shamisen Playing]

  • We're all finished dinner now. That was really yummy! It was a really interesting selection of foods.

  • It was really fun to try out some new things.

  • Lots of local foods.

  • And the atmosphere inside Ringo Bako was amazing!

  • Highly recommend that you visit there. The performances are during lunchtime and at 7 p.m.

  • They just play a few songs, so make sure you're there on time for that. You don't wanna miss that.

  • We're gonna head back to the hotel now

  • and go to sleep and we'll be up early tomorrow morning, so I'll see you again tomorrow! Bye!

  • Good morning guys! Welcome to day 2 of my trip.

  • I had a lovely sleep in my hotel room. We stayed in a hotel in Aomori last night.

  • Would give you guys a quick tour, so I had two huge beds to myself.

  • Didn't need that much space, but it was nice.

  • This is a shower area.

  • This is the makeup area here.

  • That's about it, so I'm just packing up my stuff, gonna head downstairs and we're heading to an onsen now.

  • [Music]

  • This onsen (hot spring bath) is known for being a healing onsen.

  • And lots of people come here to stay for several nights if they have a disease or an injury, so they have rooms

  • that they can stay in and they also had a nurse's office, where they can go

  • and get advice about how often they should go in the bath, how long they should do it for, and etc.

  • That's called toji in Japanese. "To" is having a bath, and "ji" is healing.

  • They also have a Ryokan, Japanese style hotel for regular customers.

  • It smells so nice in here. I love the tatami smell. Look at that!

  • Wow the water is so clear!

  • So pretty, the fall leaves just starting to change.

  • Bought some fresh corn at the gift shop to hold me over until lunch.

  • It looks so good! It's so yellow! It's so bright in color!

  • Oh my God! I'm so excited!

  • It's so good! This is so sweet!

  • We're back on our bus now. And we're just driving through the forest on the way to Oirase Gorge.

  • And we're gonna be taking a walk outside, I think. There's a waterfall nearby. It's so gorgeous out here!

  • [Music]

  • We're gonna be using these magnifying glasses to examine the moss.

  • The guide was just explaining to us that this area used to be just rocks.

  • It'll mean with no plants whatsoever.

  • But, because of the river developing here,

  • moss was able to grow on top of the rocks and then, within that moss

  • the seeds of plants landed and plants started to grow here.

  • So that's how this gigantic forest was formed.

  • Wow, sugoi (wonderful)!

  • Really cool mushrooms. Wow! These are called raccoons fart.

  • Ready?

  • Go!

  • These like, and have the name of hieroglyphics in Japanese because they look like writing.

  • We've just arrived at Towada Lake. It's huge!

  • We have about half an hour to kill and then we're gonna rent a boat and go for a ride on the lake. Looks exciting.

  • Got some grilled mochi here.

  • So good! Oh my God! Heaven! I can eat like 10 of these sticks!

Good morning and welcome to Aomori Prefecture.

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