Hirosaki & Golden Week

  Hirosaki, Aomori, Tohoku, Japan
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Well Golden Week started on Wed. the 29th and myself, Kira (from Oregon) and Anna (from NY) traveled to the northern prefecture of Aomori to the city of Hirosaki where there are 1,000s of Cherry blossom trees of various types within the former castle grounds

which are now a park and museum
. We had to go right away since it was almost time for the blossoms to fall and we didn't want to miss it by waiting till the weekend when other people were going to go. The train took 3 hours and we accidentally took the local train so it was a very uncomfortable ride. The blossoms were amazing and I think the 130 pictures I took will speak for themselves. I wove some pictures into this (my first time trying this feature) but there are many more in the picture section. Since it was golden week the park was sort of set up like a state fair with games and food booths set up everywhere. There was lots of meat on sticks, Fish sticks and tentacle sticks (yuk). I also had a banana on a stick
and a strawberry that was turned into a lollipop. There were also these weird pastery things that have baby squid or octopus in the center .

There were also a lot of musicians in the park and I took some video of them playing, I hope it works and you can hear the traditional style music
. There is also a beautiful mountain that is located in area and there are amazing views of it from the park
. Finally there were strange ducks swimming in all the moats that surround the castle grounds so I took pics of them, I've never seen a duck as pretty as they were so if someone can figure out what they are and let me know that would be really cool
After the blossoms we walked around the city and visited a old fashioned dye shop and bought some souvenirs. Aomeri is known for it's apples (fuji mostly) and they make all sorts of apple treats, wines and juices. We got lots of free samples and I bought a bottle of Sakura Liqueur (made from the cherry blossoms in the park) and Apple wine. I'm going to try and save these and ship them home if possible. It was a lot of fun and soooooo beautiful I can't even describe. I have more blogs to add from this week once I get caught up on the photos so keep watching!
PS ok so the picture weaving thing didn't work the way I thought it would but I think you can figure out which pictures go to which comments in the blog, if not just send me a message and ask me!