In September, the new issue was read| harvest was in early autumn, and there was Aomori in the north

Because the terrain resembles a big mouth, it is located in Aomori Prefecture, the northernmost point of Honshu Island, and is also known as "Big Mouth Prefecture" in Japan. But compared to this nickname, the name "food paradise" recognized by more than 100 million Japanese people is more worthy of the name. The most beautiful part of Aomori's trip is the harvest season in early autumn, which has a pleasant climate, beautiful scenery and delicious food.

FEATURES | Harvest in early autumn There is Aomori in the north

Approaching Aomori Airport, the plane lowered its altitude, the sunsplates were all opened, and a sudden green appeared in front of it. More than 70% of the territory is covered by forests, and the naming of Aomori Prefecture is really simple and crude, but it is appropriate. "The elephant to fall is Hokkaido, and the big mouth that opens upwards is Aomori Prefecture..." The nursery rhyme "47 Prefectural Song" that is well-known in Japan and uses the shape of the territory to imitate, is sung in the first two sentences. As the saying goes: eat in all directions with a big mouth. Aomori Prefecture has indeed lived up to this terrain, from field to forest products, from seafood to Japan's rare freshwater products, and it is a comprehensive excellence in the homework of "eating".

The smallest castle

After getting off the plane, I decided to go to Hirosaki, the second largest city in Aomori Prefecture. After several passes from Aomori Airport, you will arrive at Hirosaki Castle, where Hirosaki Domain used to be located, which is now Hirosaki Park. Although there are roughly all kinds of configurations from the size of the castle to the gates and moats, Hirosaki Castle is several sizes smaller than other outlying domain castles. In the early autumn afternoon, it is refreshing to wander through the green tunnel-filled gardens.

Because of a fire, Hirosaki Castle was only rebuilt in the 19th century, but at that time, the Tokugawa shogunate, which was strong in the outside world, was suspicious of the outside world and was not allowed to build the castle according to the previous specifications. So what we see now is a shrunken castle. However, because of the reconstruction and contraction of the city, the high level of construction technology and the low maintenance cost of Hirosaki Castle have escaped the law that other castles must be rebuilt once every twenty or thirty years on average. After 2015, due to the serious subsidence of the foundation due to geological movements, the castle tower was moved tens of meters away from the original site. Although the overall layout is a bit awkward, it also makes the last two of the four scenes of Hirosaki "Snow Forest Castle Mountain" - Hirosaki Castle and Iwaki Volcano - easily achieve the same frame on a sunny day.

Hirosaki people may not care about anything else, but they must not eat. I sat down at a shop in the old machiya district where the old businessmen and merchants gathered, just said hello to the shopkeeper, and without saying a word, within two minutes, the flounder sashimi and sake made from snow rice, which was also a specialty, were served. In the home of Hirosaki Domain, this is the default basic configuration of the izakaya. The deep-sea cod, which is the largest production in Japan, is hung under the eaves of the machiya house after harvesting, and is dried into a flexible dried fish, and finally becomes the second heavy taste that I pair with sake. Half-raw cod is slightly steamed and heated when eaten, and then soaked in raw egg liquid, the taste is not difficult to imagine, and it is fierce and sensitive, rough and delicate. Finally, it ends with todaya lake clam soup: a refreshing liquor of clam meat from the lake area deep in the primeval forest, all with a drop of soy sauce made from the same snow rice.

Western views in the old town

The next day, I went around the moat of Hirosaki Castle for morning exercises, but I found that this small city actually has a foreign atmosphere and ahead of the other side. In Hirosaki, where there was no place for foreigners to stay, a Western neighborhood in the south of the city appeared long before the Russo-Japanese War. This is because the Western architect Sakiyoshi Horie in the early 20th century was born in Hirosaki, and his hometown was his best test field before entering Tokyo.

For example, the old Too Private School, the earliest private school in Aomori Prefecture, which was founded in 1872, has most of its foreign teachers' dormitory buildings in the Western style, but the foot of the wall is like the traditional Japanese samurai Yashiki, which adopts the overall elevation and elevation to the ground. The first Protestant church in northeast Japan, the First Protestant Church in Northeast Japan, the Hirosaki Church of The Christian Church of Japan, was built with reference to the prototype of Notre Dame de Paris, including the Twin Towers, which are all made of wood, and Japanese elements can be seen everywhere inside the chapel, such as tatami mats that must take off their shoes.

I decided to continue the east-west line at the dinner table. Not far from Hirosaki Station and Dazai's apartment when he attended Hirosaki High School, there is a Mancha Cafe that Osamu Dazai frequented when he was a student, and the most popular place there is, of course, his "skipping class package" – a cup of coffee and a horse meat curry. Because of its cold environment, Hirosaki Domain has been a source of japan's high-quality warhorses since ancient times, and their final destination is inevitably a soup pot. Compared with the already lean beef, the running horse is even thinner, and its meat is even thinner, and it is also poured on the snow rice that is also a local specialty and has a rich taste, which is also complementary.

The land of rice paddies paintings and apples

From Hirosaki Station, you can catch a small train to Kuroishi City to the northeast and look out over one of the world's best rice-producing regions. Tohoku rice in Japan is not only of rare quality, but also can play tricks – in 1993, the villagers of The Village of Tamashekan were eager to revitalize the countryside in a new way, so they became self-taught artists, using the fields as a drawing board and rice as paints. From ancient Japanese legends to the scenery of his hometown, to classic cartoons such as Osamu Tezuka and his iron-armed Astro Boy and the Emperor of the Forest, and even foreign film themes such as "Roman Holiday", every year in early June, land artists began to sow rice in at least three colors, including green, purple and yellow, based on sketches.

©Wikimedia Commons

In Aomori, which has a rich tradition, there is no shortage of private garden pieces. Among them, the Fujita Memorial Garden under Iwaki Mountain is undoubtedly recognized as the first garden in Aomori. However, Sheng Mei Yuan may be able to penetrate the essence of inclusiveness: as the peak of the Oata Pavilion Tree, a representative figure of the martial arts stream in the gardening industry, the courtyard part of Sheng Mei Garden is an organic combination of Buddhist and Shinto styles, and the Sheng Mei Pavilion in the corner of the garden is the finishing touch of the whole garden, which is the shape of the first floor Japanese-style Yashiki and the western-style old bungalow on the second floor. This set is similar to the combination of the upper body suit and the lower body kimono, although the brain hole is large, it does not violate the harmony under the reasonable color matching.

The "forest" in the four treasures of Hirosaki, "Snow Forest Castle Mountain", does not refer to the Shirakami Mountain, but to the "forest" (that is, apple) that occupies an unknown area. So, in those days, I used up all the apple quota I had eaten for the year: there was always a glass of apple juice waiting in the morning and evening, not to mention Aomori's most famous apple pie, which was a must-have in the meal— the main ingredient was the local summer green, and the shaped large flesh and roasted were both.

On my way from Hiroshi to Aomori City, I passed by the largest surviving Jomon Period settlement site in Japan: the Sannouchi Maruyama Ruins, which is about 5,000 years old, and today I can see the unique "vertical cave dwelling" appearance of the people of Japan's primitive society, and I can also see the seed fossils of various crops and trees. Next to the site is the Aomori Prefectural Museum of Art, a regular geometry that resembles a snow wall and houses more than 170 works by Yoshitomo Nara. The 8.5-meter-tall "Aomori Dog" giant sculpture on display in the museum allows visitors to find different expressions of dogs according to different lights and locations.

Drive away the Sleepers

From Aomori Station is the sea, and from 1908 until the breakthrough of the Tsugaru Strait Undersea Tunnel in 1988, passengers only need to board the Aomori Liaison Ship with the entire train if they want to continue north to Hakodate, Hokkaido. The Hakkoda Aokan liaison ship, which has been in service for more than 24 years and is now a museum, can satisfy the curiosity of both railway fans and navigation fans. In the cabin, the passengers and vendors exchanged a whole case of Aomori apples for each other's whole can of Hokkaido milk, which suddenly returned people to the era of rapid development and people's hard work under mizumitsu or Kobayashi Tayukiji, and also made people interested in the economic history behind it.

Under the spectacular bridge that flies across Mutsu Bay, a postmodern building with the shape of a red-haired demon head makes it difficult to think about it. This Nebuta Museum WA-RASSE has the most regional culture of Aomori. Every year from August 2nd to 7th, Aomori Ayutthaya Town welcomes the Nebuta Matsuri Festival, which is even more grand than the New Year, and the several-storey Sleeping Devil Lantern Float is also a concentrated display of Aomori folk craftsmanship.

The plain factory next to the House of the Sleepers, known as A-factory, has a huge apple logo, which is as big as a dock, called a super "apple factory store", a variety of apple varieties that make me dizzy: Fuji, Wang Lin, TOKI, Xia Lu, Yellow King, Jonajin, World One... Many are first-time encounters; And the products from apple juice, apple jam, apple pie, apple cake, apple curry to apple cosmetics, constantly refreshed my understanding of the king of the fruit.

A sea of abundance

©Kentaro Toma/Unsplash

Japan, known for its railway culture, holds a grand race for station bento every year, which drives people all over the country crazy. Hirosaki's room OEOBasan personally helped me choose scallop kettle rice bento and squid exemption, respectively, the national runner-up of the two annual Japanese station bento competitions around 2010.

After returning to Aomori after a field trip, I found the famous sail hut next to Aomori Station, and I found the popular king of local cuisine, shell ware. Thick shells directly on the fire, is the best small stew pot, beat an egg, add miso and bonito flowers, not to mention four or five bites of the whole shell meat, shell stew some tofu mushrooms, even chicken fat beef can be, really from the content to the form to the tableware have it.

The reason for getting up early in Aomori is to go to the central fish market to eat the freshest catch of the day, and it may not be there when it is late. Many locals have breakfast here. In order to meet this need, the market launched a ten-point exchange coupon, spend more than a thousand yen to buy ten points of exchange coupons, you can wander between the stalls, DIY their own seafood rice bowl.

For one of the best tuna in the world, I resolutely chose to overcome my psychological shadow and take a boat to foura, where the criminal played by Rintaro Mikuni crossed the sea and landed in the movie, and finally arrived in Oma Town, the northernmost part of Honshu Island. At three o'clock in the afternoon, everyone in the world's largest tuna fishery was still trapped in the sweet sleep of a hard night at sea. Fortunately, there was the only fisherman's canteen that was open 24/7 so I wouldn't go hungry. The rare tuna stomach made of fish belly roast, can be described as a veritable appetizer; Three kinds of tuna belly rice bowls have made me addicted to different oil content.

Purification of body and mind

Departing from Omacho and traveling southeast along the Pacific coastline on the last bus of the day, my overnight berth is the village of Shimokazero, the best hot spring town in the Shimokita Peninsula, and the best sea urchin producing area in Japan. The next day I got up early and went to visit Mt. Hoo, one of Japan's three great spiritual mountains. More than a thousand years ago, Master Tendai Sect Cijue, who was practicing in China, dreamed of a senior monk saying, "Go back to Japan immediately, and after walking east for about thirty days, there will be a spirit mountain, and you will do the dojo here to spread the Dharma." "This mountain is the Mountain of Terror. Thus, in the northernmost mountains of Honshu, there is the legendary realm of life and death. On one side is the clear but bottomless Lake Uzen-Risan, and on the other side is the mountain of terror that has no grass and constantly emits sulfur gas from the small holes, is this not a realistic version of Elysium and the Hell of All Evils?

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