Aomori part 1 - Oirase Keiryuu 05.2023
Since Japan had announced they'd be normalizing their covid regulations, I wanted to try my luck with cherry blossoms in May! Plannning a trip so many months in advance for cherry blossoms and autumn leaves is a little risky, but hey, Aomori and Akita up north usually have their peak flowers during GW! I'd never been to Aomori, but the scenery looked gorgeous from videos and it'd be a great deal using a JR Tohoku pass, so off I went! Hope you get some inspiration for a Tohoku trip too, willeke4439!
First stop: Hachinohe station! The train ride from Tokyo wasn't too bad, and we arrived with just enough time to browse the station shops before the hotel shuttle. The Oirase Keiryu Hotel (owned by Hoshino Resorts) is the only hotel inside the Oirase Gorge and I had to shuffle dates and stops around to be able to stay here since I really really wanted to stay inside the gorge in Hachimantai National Park. The Oirase Keiryu originates from Lake Towada and runs 14km with lots of waterfalls, streams, and rapids in a huge protected virgin forest of beech trees and various other decidious trees inside the Hachimantai National Park bordering Aomori and Akita.
It's aready beautiful from the bus! After a 90min ride...
You're greeted with a beautiful lounge area and all you can drink apple wine, apple juice and refreshments from 3-6pm! Their apple juice was really good! As with all Hoshino Resort hotels, there are lots of additional activities you can book. Unfortunately, there are very limited spots and all the nature tours that I wanted to do were full by the time I contacted them :(
There are also a very limited number of buses to get around, so expect that you can't do everyting on a one night stay unless you're driving. Since I didn't rent a car and still wanted to see some stuff after our arrival at 3pm, I decided to hop on the JR bus going through the gorge out to Aomori and get off at a stop around 15min drive away called Tsuta onsen.
Tsuta onsen is one of the oldest ryokan in the area! I think the employee said the main building was over 1000 years old, and the onsen is very traditional so they don't have shower nozzles of any kind at this place. But look, they have a sakura still!
The main attraction here (unless you're staying at the ryokan), is Tsutanuma, which is a collection of seven numa lake/swamps in a trail loop that starts and ends here! We didn't have time to hit all the numa, but we did get to four of them. They're all charming in their own way!
From an aerial view, this numa is in the shape of ta gourd. Hence, the name Hyoutan numa!
Unfortunately, I can't post a panorama picture of Tsutanuma on LJ, but this is a huge lake, and the autumn leaves must be beautiful here! In the back, you can see the famous mountain of the area, Mt Hakkoda. There were some lovely bird calls around here, since there are multiple bird sanctuary spots along the trail.
This is my second favourite numa, Suganuma. The reflections off the fresh green foliage and the slowly setting sun are just breathtaking!
And while I highly recommend hitting the Tsutanuma area so you can walk along the peaceful nature trail with bird sanctuaries and see these lovely numa... I'd advise going earlier on another day or driving, and not taking the 4pm bus over there. There are no buses after 4pm anywhere here (which I was aware of), and Google maps said it was a 90min walk back... which I was prepared for before arriving when I was expecting a quiet mountain trail... However, the road back to the hotel is a steep, windy and treacherous one lane highway with trucks and cars! So we decided to take a taxi, but that's not really so easy in the middle of nowhere! There was actually a taxi arriving at Tsuta onsen with disembarking passengers when we finished seeing the two closest numa on the right side of the trail... Honestly, it would've been a lot more relaxing if we'd taken it and not had to ask the onsen staff to specially call in a taxi from Aomori and wait 45min for it to get here (and pay a premium for their troubles)... but the other numa were very photogenic XD Would I do it that way again? Probably not though!
Anyway, we were just in time for a quick freshing up before dinner. It's a buffet here, but don't underestimate how high their quality of food here is just because it's a buffet! Unfortunatley, I didn't bring my camera down to the restaurant, but everything is excellent! Service is excellent, they refill food very quickly and everything tastes super fresh! They had freshly cut roast beef, freshly grilled scallops, fresh sashimi for nokke don (and wow, their amaebi were top notch), salads, charcuterie, curry and so much! What makes them unique is that they try to feature apples in a lot of their savoury and sweet dishes, either in the sauce or along with the other ingredients, such as pork belly! My favorites that I haven't mentioned were this delciious seaweed noodle sunomono, the apple pork belly, the fresh yogurt with apple sauce, and of course, the freshly baked apple souffle served alongside soft serve ice cream straight from the machine!
After a satisfying meal, we headed to the onsen and the souvenir shop before the nighttime activity hosted by the hotel; stargazing! This was the one activity that I did do with the hotel and it was a very informative experience! We could see the big dipper, the north star, the spring triangle and the summer triangle, as well as Vega and Altair with the help of our guide! No pictures unfortunately because I didn't bring my big tripod...though some people's iphones seemed to take surprisingly good pictures of the stars!
As for other activities, you can also make these beautiful gourd lights or some moss plants for an additional cost. I had to save room in my bag for future souvenir shopping though! They also had a whole display of different gourd lights that was really lovely and rather magical. These were my favorites.
We turned in after looking at the displays and the starry sky for an early 6am shuttle bus to the half-way point in the gorge the next morning! The hotel runs them every hour until 4pm, and the first one was at 6am, as well as the only one we could make including breakfast and our shuttle out to Aomori. All that and more in the next post!
First stop: Hachinohe station! The train ride from Tokyo wasn't too bad, and we arrived with just enough time to browse the station shops before the hotel shuttle. The Oirase Keiryu Hotel (owned by Hoshino Resorts) is the only hotel inside the Oirase Gorge and I had to shuffle dates and stops around to be able to stay here since I really really wanted to stay inside the gorge in Hachimantai National Park. The Oirase Keiryu originates from Lake Towada and runs 14km with lots of waterfalls, streams, and rapids in a huge protected virgin forest of beech trees and various other decidious trees inside the Hachimantai National Park bordering Aomori and Akita.
It's aready beautiful from the bus! After a 90min ride...
You're greeted with a beautiful lounge area and all you can drink apple wine, apple juice and refreshments from 3-6pm! Their apple juice was really good! As with all Hoshino Resort hotels, there are lots of additional activities you can book. Unfortunately, there are very limited spots and all the nature tours that I wanted to do were full by the time I contacted them :(
There are also a very limited number of buses to get around, so expect that you can't do everyting on a one night stay unless you're driving. Since I didn't rent a car and still wanted to see some stuff after our arrival at 3pm, I decided to hop on the JR bus going through the gorge out to Aomori and get off at a stop around 15min drive away called Tsuta onsen.
Tsuta onsen is one of the oldest ryokan in the area! I think the employee said the main building was over 1000 years old, and the onsen is very traditional so they don't have shower nozzles of any kind at this place. But look, they have a sakura still!
The main attraction here (unless you're staying at the ryokan), is Tsutanuma, which is a collection of seven numa lake/swamps in a trail loop that starts and ends here! We didn't have time to hit all the numa, but we did get to four of them. They're all charming in their own way!
From an aerial view, this numa is in the shape of ta gourd. Hence, the name Hyoutan numa!
Unfortunately, I can't post a panorama picture of Tsutanuma on LJ, but this is a huge lake, and the autumn leaves must be beautiful here! In the back, you can see the famous mountain of the area, Mt Hakkoda. There were some lovely bird calls around here, since there are multiple bird sanctuary spots along the trail.
This is my second favourite numa, Suganuma. The reflections off the fresh green foliage and the slowly setting sun are just breathtaking!
And while I highly recommend hitting the Tsutanuma area so you can walk along the peaceful nature trail with bird sanctuaries and see these lovely numa... I'd advise going earlier on another day or driving, and not taking the 4pm bus over there. There are no buses after 4pm anywhere here (which I was aware of), and Google maps said it was a 90min walk back... which I was prepared for before arriving when I was expecting a quiet mountain trail... However, the road back to the hotel is a steep, windy and treacherous one lane highway with trucks and cars! So we decided to take a taxi, but that's not really so easy in the middle of nowhere! There was actually a taxi arriving at Tsuta onsen with disembarking passengers when we finished seeing the two closest numa on the right side of the trail... Honestly, it would've been a lot more relaxing if we'd taken it and not had to ask the onsen staff to specially call in a taxi from Aomori and wait 45min for it to get here (and pay a premium for their troubles)... but the other numa were very photogenic XD Would I do it that way again? Probably not though!
Anyway, we were just in time for a quick freshing up before dinner. It's a buffet here, but don't underestimate how high their quality of food here is just because it's a buffet! Unfortunatley, I didn't bring my camera down to the restaurant, but everything is excellent! Service is excellent, they refill food very quickly and everything tastes super fresh! They had freshly cut roast beef, freshly grilled scallops, fresh sashimi for nokke don (and wow, their amaebi were top notch), salads, charcuterie, curry and so much! What makes them unique is that they try to feature apples in a lot of their savoury and sweet dishes, either in the sauce or along with the other ingredients, such as pork belly! My favorites that I haven't mentioned were this delciious seaweed noodle sunomono, the apple pork belly, the fresh yogurt with apple sauce, and of course, the freshly baked apple souffle served alongside soft serve ice cream straight from the machine!
After a satisfying meal, we headed to the onsen and the souvenir shop before the nighttime activity hosted by the hotel; stargazing! This was the one activity that I did do with the hotel and it was a very informative experience! We could see the big dipper, the north star, the spring triangle and the summer triangle, as well as Vega and Altair with the help of our guide! No pictures unfortunately because I didn't bring my big tripod...though some people's iphones seemed to take surprisingly good pictures of the stars!
As for other activities, you can also make these beautiful gourd lights or some moss plants for an additional cost. I had to save room in my bag for future souvenir shopping though! They also had a whole display of different gourd lights that was really lovely and rather magical. These were my favorites.
We turned in after looking at the displays and the starry sky for an early 6am shuttle bus to the half-way point in the gorge the next morning! The hotel runs them every hour until 4pm, and the first one was at 6am, as well as the only one we could make including breakfast and our shuttle out to Aomori. All that and more in the next post!