Since today’s planned morning activity was to go and see the Shōwa Daibutsu and it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon we didn’t feel the need to rush out this morning. So by the time we had dragged ourselves out of bed, worked out how to use the Japanese style kettle and drip coffee packs in the room (fiddly but great coffee) it was gone 10am. Pair of lazy sods eh!

As we were heading to the bus station (next to Aomori Eki) anyway it would have rude not to drop into DouTor for coffee and sandwiches again since that seemed to have become our “Breakfast of Choice” on this trip. And obviously we don’t like to be rude, so we did.

Bit of a detour after DouTor (see what I did there? Yes? Not worth it was it!) to check out the A‑Factory building round the corner from the station as it looked interesting yesterday and we wanted to find out what it was all about. And as I say, we weren’t rushed.

Turns out that it’s all about Apples. Seriously – it's all about apples.

If you can make something out of an apple, add an apple to something else or decorate something with an apple motif, it’s probably on sale here somewhere. Genuinely impressive what you can do with a piece of fruit. Why this obsession with apples? Well, to be honest we weren’t exactly sure at the time, although it was evident that Aomori was known for growing them. After a bit of later research though it did become abundantly clear. Aomori is not just famous locally for apples; Aomori Prefecture grows 56% of all the apples in Japan! That, dear reader, is a one hell of a lot of apples. Given that fact, it’s unsurprising that they have found so many ways to use the things.

Once we were all apple’d out, we nipped into the nearby Nebuta Museum’s gift shop for a quick nosey, decided definitively to come and see the museum proper before we left Aomori, and then headed back to the station to wait for the bus. In the process passing the local Pride Café;

すべての人が希望を持てる青森へ　(Very roughly ”Everyone has hope In Aomori”）

Good - damn right too!

The bus to the Daibutsu wasn’t due for a while, so while we waited we watched a team of people fixing and re-tarmacking a large pothole next to our stop. And I do mean team. In the UK there would have been two, at a push three, people max. Here there were 6 people; a lorry driver, two guys making sure everyone was at a safe distance and two guys supervising the one young lad who was blowtorching the edges of the hole. I wish I'd managed to get a photo but there was no way to do it without being rude. A bit like the “use two people per car park exit to stop pedestrians” last year in Kyoto, this did seem a bit like a job creation scheme. Or (probably more accurately) a scheme to find work for people with jobs-for-life. Still struggling to understand how this gels with Japan having a known shortage of labour. Any insights into this genuinely appreciated.

Once the bus turned up we had about a 45 minute drive through Aomori centre to the outskirts and the Seiryū-ji and the Daibutsu.

Once we arrived (and checked carefully with the driver that we could catch the bus back from the same place – very important that!) we paid our ¥600 entrance fee each (about £9 total) and walked up the hill into the enormous site. Just after the entrance is Seiryū-ji itself and to the left is Japan’s fourth biggest, five story pagoda (yes, we looked this up later). You than walk up the path through the trees, past the Water Children and their windmills (from people who have lost children), before the Daibutsu itself appears round the corner.

And they aren’t joking either – it is a Dai Butsu!

You can look up all the information online about this so I won’t bore you (unless it’s already too late) with the details but the summary is that it was built in Shōwa 59 (1984) as a way to honour all the people who fell in the war, not just on the Japanese side. It’s the tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha in Japan, which I know sounds like it came from the “keep adding increasingly specific adjectives until we come top” school of marketing, but it’s genuinely impressive. Even better, once you’ve got over the scale of it, you can go inside and see how it was constructed. There’s also the names of (I’m presuming here) the war dead and a series of paintings on Buddhist teaching, which aren’t as trite as you’d think. They also appear to do calligraphy (and similar) sessions but there weren’t any when we went – to be fair it was mid-week and out of season.

We spend a good while mooching about and photographing the place from every angle, including the usual reciprocal tourist shots with a trio of American servicemen who were doing a tour. And I’ll happily go on record here that however they are teaching their military to behave abroad it’s working – lovely polite bunch of guys - I even got called ‘sir’. Which is more than I get called in shops at home by spotty teenagers who have clearly never heard of customer service. Victor Meldrew-esque rant over.

Quite a bit more time spent after this touring around the site, including the rather sombre graveyard tucked away down the side (sorry don’t know the significance – any enlightenment honestly appreciated), the highly impressive main temple and its views of the pagoda and Zen Garden.  

The whole experience was one I’d highly recommend to anyone if you’re in the area. Not expensive, you get to see bits of the “real” Aomori on your way out (Jesus that sounds pretentious – sorry) and the entire site is beautiful. And I don’t use that work lightly – in fact I hardly use it at all. Especially without some invective attached. Obviously apart from to describe Tracey. Yes I just threw up in my mouth a bit too.

Once we’d seen everything we could and poked into everything that was allowed we strolled back down to the bus stop and a short while later we were winding our way back towards Aomori centre. This time the bus picked up a load of schoolkids from the large High School on the way and some of these didn’t disembark until we were nearly back at Aomori Eki. Do they really have to travel all that way to get to school or is that the best one in the area and so worth the journey? No clue. I’ll need to ask around on FB to see if I can get an answer. Don’t you love the power of t’Internet.

Bit of a bus ride and short womble later and we were back in Aomori and ticking off another “must see” from our list: The ASPAM Building (Aomori Tower). As the poster says, there’s more to Aomori than just the Nebuta festival.

We spent a wee while checking out the shops on the lower stories then took the lift to the top for the view across the city/harbour. Once again on this trip, I’ll let the photos do the talking since that was our focus for the next hour or so as night fell. Pretty though eh?

At this point the place was making unmistakable signs of closing up and anyway we’d nearly filled our camera’s/phone’s so it was time for a quick return to the hotel so we could back up the day’s photos and have a bit of rest before tea.

No mucking about this time – straight to BariBari for okonomiyaki tonight. Got welcomed back by the same guy that gave us the definitive lesson on making it last night and had a bit of a chat with the mum of a family in the next booth about our mutual love of melon soda and it’s similarity to Irn Bru. International relations based on acid coloured fizzy drinks - seems like it might be a plan!

And kettle sake in the hotel room before bed. Just because we're a class act.