Today was a travel day and really it’s just as well. I haven’t been feeling 100% and sitting on my ass all morning was pretty much what I needed. It would’ve been better if the chair on the Super Hokuto train was as nice as the chair on the Shinkansen, but whatever. I was asleep part of the time and I felt fine.

It takes a while to pack up my stuff so I didn’t rush and took a taxi to Sapporo station. I found breakfast at the very same place I had breakfast on Monday on the way to the airport. I don’t have to show you the buzzer they give you to pick up your food again. This time I got the bacon and egg.

After that I got on the train and had to kick an older woman out of my seat. She was going further than I was but it was my seat after all. She got the aisle so it wasn’t awful for her. It was 3 ½ hours on the Super Hokuto, another hour on the Tohoku Shinkansen, and then 10 minutes on a local train to get to Aomori. There was a 40 minute layover in Shin-Hakodate so I bought an ekiben there.

For cold lunches, ekiben are pretty good.

I figured I’d stop at Aomori because I was going to spend enough time on trains for one day. There’s only a couple of things to see in Aomori according to the travel web sites and I was prepared to be underwhelmed. The Wa Rasse Nebuta museum seemed to start out a little dull, but they housed four of the best floats from the previous year’s parade. The floats are impressive. They’re 7m by 9m (23′ x 29.5′), made of wire and paper, and lit internally by electric lights and a construction generator. The size is pretty spectacular. It takes them a year to make one, and one of the designers is quoted on a video as saying he does it without plans.

There was also a demonstration of the music played during the festival and a busload of Chinese tourists.

It didn’t take very long to see the whole museum, but it was really worth the trip to Aomori to see it.

Right next door is some interesting architecture at the A-Factory. The A-Factory turned out to be a souvenir shop with some restaurants, but what did I see in the back?

Is it a craft beer brewery?

Unfortunately it was “just” an apple cider maker. There’s a tasting machine upstairs.

For ¥900 you could taste everything they had.

I also talked to two women from DC and one of them complained a lot about the heat. Ha. Just like I do.

On the water right behind the A-Factory is a large ferry that’s being used as a museum. I thought I’d give it a chance and I highly recommend it.

This was the Japan National Railway ferry that went across the Tsugaru Strait to Hakodate, which explains why there’s a large but mostly abandoned-looking rail yard terminus here. You could ship things by train to Aomori and it would continue on to Hokkaido on the ferry. There are even rail tracks straight onto the ferry and they’d just load mail cars and ship them across the strait. A tunnel was completed in the ’80’s but until then it took a plane or a boat to get to Hokkaido.

The entrance floor (the 2nd, I think) has a meeting room and the ticket booth. The 3rd floor had photos and dioramas of older times when the ferry was in use. There were ferry passengers and apple sellers. It’s pretty interesting and shows how far Japan has come. There are also displays of the ferries and trains of the time.

The 4th floor shows more information on the ship including different levels of berths and the bridge. You can go up to get on the upper deck above and a large snowblower is sitting out there waiting for the huge snows of the area.

The path leads back down to the elevator for the first floor, which would be a car deck but it’s the rail car deck for freight and mail cars that loaded directly onto the ship.

Down below were the engine and generator rooms.

It was pretty cool.

After that I went back to the A-Factory to have a hamburger. They had a limited number of ¥3000 aged beef burgers and when I saw there was one left I had to have it.

It wasn’t that big, but it was tasty.

Well, that’s pretty much it. I feel like I’m overpaying for another hotel room, but it does seem to be quiet so I’m OK with it. Not like I have much choice.