Aomori and Lake Towada

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Fall colors (紅葉, "kouyou"), don't start in Kanto until early to mid November, and generally last until the beginning to the middle of December. It's a long, late stretch that seems really nice, because it makes winter itself feel much shorter. We were, however, very ready to see some beautiful colors, so Rani and I took a somewhat spontaneous two-day trip up to the northern-most part of the Honshu island, which is Aomori prefecture. The 9 hour trip by car took us only 3 hours by shinkansen, and I will never stop being amazed at how convenient it is. I always bring a train beer now, and I can sit and drink and listen to music as the bullet train whisks me off to faraway parts of the country. Technology at its finest!

We left Friday afternoon after work and had a bit of a SNAFU trying to find each other at Tokyo Station. I never take the shinkansen from here, because I am always going west rather than north, and as such it's faster and easier to catch the train at Shin-Yokohama. So we did a little dance of attempting to track each other down outside different ticket gates, but we eventually made it. We got our tickets and hopped on the Hayabusa, the fastest Tohoku shinkansen that took us straight up north to Shin-Aomori. There, with some sprinting to catch the only Ou line train for the next 40 minutes, we finished our trip to Aomori Station with a short local train.

We had decided to stay near Aomori Station due to getting in late that night, and our hostel was a stone's throw away from the station itself. The woman who checked us in and helped us was incredibly sweet and warm, and the hostel itself had nice yukata and some towels for us, along with traditional futon bedding. We were exhausted, so the hot shower and comfy futon felt amazing!

Our alarm woke us up at 6:30 the next morning (sleeping in for both of us, ugh, adulthood), and we set out to catch the infrequent bus that runs from Aomori Station into Lake Towada (十和田湖, "towadako"). It's a three-hour bus ride, but we weren't taking it the whole way, and unlike buses in the city, the bus only sells as many tickets as there are seats - so you don't have to stand. We took the bus only an hour to Mt. Haddoka, a peak with a ropeway and brilliant autumn colors surrounding the base. Unfortunately for us, our plans to hike around the summit were thwarted by the dense fog that lowered visibility to 0, and the rain that turned to sleet and ice by the time we reached the top via cable car due to the fact that it was 2.5 degrees Celsius. Cold!! This was a bummer, but the colors themselves were better at the bottom anyway, so we just decided to skip the hike there and head back down.

We caught an earlier bus than anticipated to continue towards Lake Towada and stopped at Ishigedo, which is the beginning of the Oirase Stream (奥入瀬). Oirase is a long, easily walkable stream that feeds into Lake Towada, and is famous for its autumn colors. There were many other people here hoping to get some good photos of the foliage, and we planned to walk the entire length of the stream to the end, a stop called Nenokuchi. We made about 7km of it before it started to rain again.

Oirase itself was beautiful and brimming with color. The trail is dotted with waterfalls of varying size and width, so it was a gorgeous location without the fall colors, and even better with them. The rain and cool temperatures kept perhaps most of the tourists away, because we saw other people but never an abundance of them, which was surprising to me. Most of the people we did see were the old people on the tours, riding in their massive buses altogether and following the flag-holding guides.

We did the last 2km in the rain and were completely soaked and freezing by the time we reached the last waterfall. It was another 1.6km or so until Nenokuchi, but there was a bus stopping by in 15 minutes, and we decided to forego the remainder of the stream to get out of the rain. The bus dropped us off at Lake Towada, in the main settlement called Yasumiya, which was 80% tourism revolving around the lake itself. We got some much-needed lunch and then went out to do a brief bit of exploring before finding our hostel, a 5-minute walk from the lakeside.

Our hostel was really, really nice. Again, the staff there was incredibly kind and accommodating, and I had some nice conversations with them in Japanese. We didn't have any towels, which was honestly the only bad point, but we did have a heater in our room that worked like a charm. This was good, since it was pretty cold at night, and it was a shock to our summer-soaked systems. We actually fell asleep before 8pm, which is hilarious and sad all at the same time - and we slept until the next morning at 7am!

Sunday was a sunny and beautiful day, so the weather was much better. During breakfast (traditional Japanese breakfast the hostel provided), we noticed a sign that said free bicycle rentals for hostel guests, and went to inquire at the desk about it. The staff not only were immediately out to get us bikes, but also stored our bags for us so we wouldn't have to ride with our packs on. The man working the front desk got us two bikes from the shed and we set off to go around the lake a bit. We couldn't do it all, since the lake is the third-largest lake in Japan with a circumference of 44km!

We went about 9km around and then started hitting some major hills, and our bikes were not made for that (mine didn't even have any other speeds, haha), so that was the point when we turned back around. The ride was GORGEOUS, and absolutely perfect to do in the morning - the temperature was nice, the traffic wasn't bad along the road we were following, and the foliage was beautiful. Really a great idea, I'm so glad we discovered it was an option!

Along the lake, there was a picturesque coffee shop with about three tables total, so we stopped in to get some coffee and warm up a bit. The owner there was really kind as well, and we ran into a photography group taking pictures around the area. Then we biked a bit more on the promenade, stopped for more pictures, and finally swung back up to return the bicycles to the hostel. As soon as they saw us coming, they brought our bags out for us so we wouldn't have to take our shoes off again. And told us about the bus back, the times, and the boat tour, which was our next stop anyway. Great hostel staff!

The boats depart every half hour, and are 50-minute long sight-seeing loops around the far right side of the lake. I took some motion sickness medicine, so we were safe, and we departed on our boat with the best seats in the house right at the front so we could see out the huge windows. The mountains and hills surrounding Lake Towada were in full display of beautiful colors, and it was so pretty to see the scope of the lake from a different vantage point.

The boat tour ended, and we did some omiyage (souvenir) shopping and ate delicious local foods on sticks, then had lunch before getting back on the bus. Because I had done some research, I discovered that going back through Hachinohe Station was better, as the bus ride was only 2 hours as opposed to the 3 back to Aomori Station, and that the shinkansen also stops there, cutting our bullet train trip by 30 minutes. Still, it was a 2 hour bus ride, plus a nearly 3 hour shinkansen ride back to Tokyo, and then another hour on the local trains to get back to my apartment. Quite a long travel time right at the end, but really worth it, because it was so wonderful!

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