Shimokita Penninsula

Another weekend, another fantastic adventure. After work last Friday myself and Jaqueline headed North to visit an ALT (Allie) who lives a 3hour drive away in Kazamaura, (or its easier to remember cuz-yo-mama) She lives in a tiny tiny village along the coast of the Shimokita peninsula of Aomori. She is truly as rural as you can get. We saw monkeys chilling out on the roadside, many many bear warning signs, some crazy deer/goat/wolf things and a few large ferret kind of animal, who knows! Saturday we were up early, it was a glorious Autumn day, the sun was floating in a blue sky but the air was crisp, we headed off from Allie's at about 9.30am and went on a fantastic hike to a waterfall. When we arrived to the start point we headed for a pee stop in the cultural centre which turned out to be a valuable stop. They kitted us out with welly boots (we were unaware that most of the walk is infact wading through a river), we were given several bells to attach to ourselves to scare away the bears, then a spray so if the bears attacked us we had a defense. Although the thought of unscrewing two lids and unhinging the can in enough time to aim and spray in the bears eyes I thought was quite ambitious. They also gave us a walky talky and attempted to give us helmets, but we assured them we would be careful climbers. We hiked to the mountain and back in about 3-4hours, I would be surprised if the whole city couldn’t hear the obnoxious bells ringing all the way with us! The sun crept through the leaves, we skipped around jingling like crazy elves and basked in the beauty of Aomori ‘The Blue Forest’. No bears though.

The bear bells

Most of the hike consisted of hanging onto these ropes!

And wading through the river

Allie climbing through the forest.

We named him 'Wakarimasita'

The Blue Forest

The waterfall

Allie and The Blue Forest

We then ventured to a natural sulphur onsen, which was amazing despite the god awful foul smell. We came out feeling fabulous with silky smooth skin but smelling a little eggy, we then headed to Oma to try and catch the Tuna festival. Unfortunately we spent too long in the egg baths and missed the festival but instead we headed for a drive around the coast. The scenery around the coast was breathtakingly beautiful, vertical rocks pop out of the sea everywhere and pierce the pancake flat calm water. We caught the sunset just in time before heading back to Mutsu for dinner. We finished the day in a rustic little pizza restaurant, resting our legs on the huge oak chairs, we ate ice cream from china cups and reminisced over one of our favourite days in Japan so far.

Flags at the Oma tuna Festival

Oma

A Gay Bear

Sunset over Hokkaido

Little Allie and Large rocks

Dusk