Summer vacation 14 - Kakunodate, 1000 steps in Yamadera and a delicious dinner

As I had another day with quite some driving and an early dinner time ahead, I decided to skip Tazawa ko an directly go to Kakunodate, a small town, that has a lovely Samurai district. The morning rain just was gone and the heat already started early.

Next stop was Yamadera, where there is a temple area in the mountains. I'm used to find temples with some stairs as approach. But 1000 steps???

Well, it's definitely worth it. 

I made it to Zao Onsen, my final stop for the day, in time to take a nice soak in one of the baths, my hotel has, before time for dinner came

Here the starters

The rest of the pictures is not yet synchronized. It's a bit difficult with the Wifi. 

The view from my room

What a wonderfull day!

Summer vacation 14 - Water, old stones and a taste of hell

The route for this day was relatively short, a bit more then 120 km. so a lot of time for activity. And this is good because the weather cooperated. So I first had to catch up with the Oirase stream. Taking the bike to go down a bit (the street follows the stream as the hiking trail does) and hike back up. 

On the way out of the crater a nice overview over the lake.

Next stop should have been the Hachimantai area, where there is a lot of volcanic activity. But on the way there a sign caught my eye: Oyu stone circle

Quick investigation int the internet: this is another Jomon related site. So I did the little detour and watched it. It is dated for about the same time as Stonehenge and also was oriented for the summer and winter solstice

On we go from sun to hell. The next stop was an Onsen on the foot of Hachimantei mountain, which has a very active volcanic area behind, Goshogake. There are spitting mud volcanoes, mud pools, that are bubbling, steam vents and hot streams all around. The water is highly acidic with a PH around 1. 

No time to visit the adjacent onsen, as dinner in my next Ryokan is waiting. This one has a nice onsen with a great outdoor pool in which I can shortly relax before dinner (here the starters)

Summer vacation 14 - the way back started - Aomori - Hakkoda mountain - Towada ko

Aomori was the northern most point of this years trip. So from there I'm on my way back.

First stop will be at Towada ko but on the way there I stop by at Hakkoda mountain. It was an overcast day but the cable car brought me above or behind the clouds. 

There are several peaks and I decided to try at least Akakuradake, which is the first in a row of three peaks. 

A nice hike with some great views over the crater of this vulcano and som pretty flowers.

In the crater some marshland was created.

On the way further I stopped by at another marshland. Due to the low clouds all the grass there was dripping wet. So I ended up being soaked. 

So I decided to check out the onsen close by. This was a brand new building with a nice outdoor pool. And a huge indoor pool.

It was late already, when I reached my accommodation for the night. No restaurants on the way. So luckily I could get some dinner at my hotel/ryokan.

On the next day cloud base first was on the rim of the crater of lake Towada. Later it came down to the lake and it was raining more or less the whole day. So no chance for my walk along the Oirase stream, that I had planned for the day.

Summer vacation 14 - Tono

Tono is a small town in the highlands of Iwate, that has quite some nice sightseeing spots. I stopped by an open air museum, that has some farmhouses grouped as a little village with some forests around and a small river running through. A lot of nature. So most pictures are nature here.

Second stop was a small temple, where the stairs to it are the main attraction. 

And last a small area in a forest close by, where the 500 disciplines of Buddhism are engraved in stones. Some of them a bit hard to see below the moss.

Summer vacation 14 - world natural heritage and candidate for world cultural heritage

Yesterday I wanted to visit the third Japanese world natural heritage site after Yakushima and Shiretoko: Shirakami Sanchi

This is an 8000 year old beech forest. Beech trees grow very slowly. One of the trees there is 400 years old.

Unfortunately where the bridges over a river, that comes down over three waterfalls, swept away probably by the Taifun, that was comming through. The park rangers where showing impressive pictures of the rest of the bridges. In the area, that is accessible, I took a picture of a very small 'bridge', that is tied wit a rope to a nearby tree, so that it is not going too far in the next rain.

Some smaller waterfalls comming down from the side gave a nice refreshing impression

Some part of the road here is a dirt road. I thought about taking it to the other side of the park, down to the coast, if time would have allowed but decision was made by park authorities:

In the middle of the dirt road where some curves done as a tar road. One of the best stretches started in the middle of nowhere and ended around the next corner as dirt road again

Today it was raining from the morning, so we first decided to go to an onsen. I still can smell a bit of the sulfur. Afterwards on the way to Aomori it stopped raining, so we had the chance to visit an excavation site of the early and middle Jomon period, which was between 5500 and 4000 years ago. The site, together with other sites in Hokkaido and Northern Tohoku, applied as worl heritage site. They rebuilt some houses according to the findings

Some buildings were quite huge. 

Around the site further excavations are done