Rokkasho Salmon Festival

Yesterday, we went to the Rokkasho Salmon Festival. Rokkasho, Aomori is known for two things...a national nuclear reprocessing center and their annual festival of salmon. What better place to pick up a bargain on salmon than right next to a nuclear plant? Anyways, the festival was quite fun.

I really love the way Japanese eat. They had a big building full of small bbq grills where you brought in your own fresh vegetables and meat and cooked it right there. Its like a big Mongolian BBQ for everyone.

The highlight of the festival is the actual salmon catch. Everyone buys a salmon ticket for $9-$14 (depending on how early you bought it). They then make a circle around a little knee-deep pool full of salmon. Keep in mind that the temperature is about 50 degrees F and there's a wicked wind coming off the ocean. Notice most of the Japanese all bundled up while most Americans are barefoot in shorts.

And they're off! They're all given a signal and they all jump in at once. The salmon are instantly whipped into a frenzy and everything goes crazy.

While many of the older Japanese men easily pluck their salmon out by the tail, this guy shows that it is definitely harder than it looks.

Overall, it was an interesting experience. There is another salmon festival in a couple of weeks at another village. I plan on trying for a salmon at that one.

Hachinoe Fish Market

We can't get enough of the fish market. You could eat there every day for a month and never eat the same thing twice.

Mmmm...shark fin and jellyfish salad.

Hachinoe Tour

Yesterday, Rose and I went on a tour of Hachinoe City. We started out at a fish market and then went onto a Shinto shrine and then a mall.
This is Rose and our tour guide, Kuniko. Kuniko was wonderful and did a good job of helping us sample many different kinds of Japanese cuisine. We tried dried herring, herring eggs, squid ink pastries, rice (as opposed to potato) chips, and apple vinegar juice just to name a few. Our favorite, by far, was a mixture of shredded shark fin and jellyfish marinated in sesame oil. It was absolutely delicious.

The Japanese take the look of their food quite seriously. While I didn’t take nearly enough pictures of the food, it was quickly apparent that creating a pleasant looking dish is a painstaking process for the Japanese cook. This is a picture of Japanese pancakes. They fry the flapjacks in special molds that look like a fish. They were quite delicious and had a type of pudding inside the pancakes.

This is a wooden carving of the particular Shinto god worshipped at the Hachinoe Shinto shrine. This god, Hachimon, is the Shinto god of war. The tour guide was quick to point out that the many bottles of Sake at the base of the statue does not mean that Hachimon was an “Alcohoric”. These bottles of Sake were left as gifts by those seeking Hachimon’s grace.

At Shinto shrines, you can buy small pieces of paper with your fortune on them, much like a fortune cookie. If your slip of paper forecasts good luck, you take the slip of paper home and share the good fortune with your friends. If your slip of paper forecasts bad luck, you tie it to this fixture so that the gods may examine your future and perhaps mitigate your future bad fortune.

The Japanese are quite fond of trees. The boast some of the nicest plots of old-growth forests in the world…not a bad thing for such a developed society. This particular Cedar tree (in the middle) is over 400 years old. While I couldn’t make out everything the tour guide said, he said something about using parts of this tree to make a very special kind of Sake.

Oirase Gorge & Towada Lake

We spent the afternoon driving through Oirase Gorge up to Tawada Lake. The drive was gorgeous...I can't remember seeing such a scenic drive. It had rained right before we drove up there, so the Oirase river was raging as well as the dozen or so waterfalls which feed into it. It was a really nice time. Lake Towada is inside a volcano crater. Its supposed to be one of the deepest lakes in Japan. As you can see, it was quite the sight as well. I will definitely spend more time up there. I plan on taking a dip in one of the many hot springs up there after the snow starts falling...that oughtta be interesting.

Here we are Japan!

Well, we're here now. It looks like we're really going to enjoy it. Rose is already pretty excited about all the Asian food. The area is kind of rural, yet feels almost crowded at spots...a feeling I always get in Asia. The locals are really friendly, much more so than the locals

at Aviano.