Tanesashi is a nice scenic coastline with a hiking trail and old fort-like structure. It’s a great place to spend a few hours and take some great pictures. The fort like structure is called Ashigezaki View Point. We’ve been there several times and most recently took family there for a visit. There is also a little place their that sells our favorite outing treat, soft serve ice cream 🙂 It’s [Read more…]
Big Buddha in Aomori City
There is a Giant bronze Big Buddha statue located in Aomori city, which is about 1 1/2 hours from Misawa. It is almost 69 feet tall and weights 220 tons! It was built in 1984 and the Japanese go there to pray to their ancestors and for their dead children. There are also several different statues located throughout the park. I think the hardest thing about visiting these places as a Christian is [Read more…]
Black Sand Beaches
When people think of the beach they generally picture soft white sand as far as the eye can see. I was surprised on our first visit to both the Icleandic beaches and the beach here in Japan to find that there wasn’t white sand. While the sand here in Japan is darker, some even call it black sand, but having lived in Iceland and seen true black beaches I wouldn’t quite call it black. One of the downsides [Read more…]
Children’s Botanical Garden In Hachinohe
The Children’s Botanical Garden in Hachinohe is a neat little (or rather big) park to spend the day at. It has many things to look at from Statues to vehicles (fire truck, helicopter, ect). It also has an awesome view from the lookout tower. There are a few rides, a pond, flowers, a fountain and a small pet ‘zoo’ which consists of a chipmunk, goats, and some ducks. There are also horse rides [Read more…]
Driving on the Other Side
One of the things that people don’t realize about Japan is that we drive on the other side here, literally the left side. While this might not seem like a big deal it’s a bit tricky at first. Think about it from the age of 15 (in most states, and where I grew up in Idaho) we are taught how to drive on the right side. Then 10 years later we move to Japan and suddenly we are expected to drive on [Read more…]
Hirosaki Castle
We made the drive to visit Hirosaki Castle, it’s supposed to be very pretty when the cherry blossoms are out, but not being fans of massive crowds we picked a less ‘touristy’ time to visit. We were happily surprised to find there is free admittance to the castle on Sundays. I’m not sure it would be worth it to pay, so it was great we went on a day it was free. Plus it was great because our families [Read more…]
Statue of Liberty Park, Japan
There is neat park called Statue of Liberty Park in Hachinohe. It has a mini-scaled version of the Statue of Liberty. It’s only about 30-40 mins from where we live. We’ve been there several times as it’s a great place to do on nice days. We just recently went when we had family visiting and I tried to take some more interesting pics of the statue. It’s supposedly located directly across the [Read more…]
Japanese Dragon Water Fountain
When traveling in Japan we have noticed at the temples there are usually Dragon water fountains. These fountains spout out water which you collect in a metal cup and then drink. Mr. B and Boo have been brave enough to sample from each fountain, while the rest of us just observed. Thankfully neither experienced any stomach problems from their sampling.
Japanese Dragon Water Fountain, depicted as [Read more…]
Lake Towada Snow Festival
Lake Towada (about 1-1 1/2 hours drive from us) had a snow festival as well. It had less snow sculptures but one giant one. It also had an amazing scenic view of the lake partially frozen over. We also went to see the ‘famous’ maiden statues, a temple, and the swans on the lake. There was a ferry that was available to ride around the lake on, but since our family is still traumatized from the [Read more…]
Misawa Snow Festival
The first year we moved here (2006) we went to the local Misawa snow festival, for the past 2 years due to crazy weather and little snow there has been no Misawa snow festival. So it’s a good thing we went the 1st year or we would’ve never got to experience it. It was a bit chilly but we all bundled up and headed out. They had lots of huge snow sculptures and their love of American cartoons could [Read more…]