{"id":13101,"date":"2023-09-28T04:41:16","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T08:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=13101"},"modified":"2024-03-02T12:10:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T17:10:27","slug":"tp1-day-13-aamori-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/28\/tp1-day-13-aamori-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"TP1 Day 13: Aamori, Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our third port, Aamori<\/a>, lies less than 80 miles due south of Hakodate. The ship could probably make the trip in less than 5 hours. But why arrive before midnight when you can go out beyond the 12-mile limit and let passengers lose money all night? So that’s what we did, arriving around 7am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carnival Luminosa<\/em> in Aamori<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Aamori is our first port on the mainland of Japan. It is about the same size as Hakodate but feels larger, perhaps because it is less geographically constrained and so sprawls more. We again opted to walk the city, skipping the excursions. We first walked to the tourism office which is housed in a dramatic triangular building. The tourism office was a bust, adding little to what we already knew (thanks to my research). But it did have some interesting shops. Marlene found a very nice kimono and a few gift trinkets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Greeted on the dock in Aamori<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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View from our cabin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Tourism office building<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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On the way to the tourism office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Modeling the kimono<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Next we walked to the Nebuta Museum<\/a>. This is a small (and inexpensive – tickets are under $5) museum that features floats from the Nebuta Matsuri Festival<\/a> which is held August 2-7 each year. It is basically a harvest festival but the floats are spectacular. We loved them. We also had a turn at the Taiko<\/a> drums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Float fragments<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Taiko drums<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Nebuta floats<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Nebuta masks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Marlene got some instruction from the museum staff on how to tie the sash on her kimono. Then we had lunch in the museum restaurant. I had a full sushi lunch while Marlene had a large ramen bowl. Both were very good. The price was a pleasant surprise – about $15 total. And no tipping in Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Us at lunch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Sushi meal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ramen bowl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We both found the restroom facilities to be interesting. Very clean, of course, but with fixtures unfamiliar to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bow-tying help<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Toilet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Urinal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After the museum we wandered through central Aamori for a while before visiting the Utou jinja Shrine<\/a>. This is a small Shinto <\/a>shrine in central Aamori. We didn’t go in as a family was worshipping. But we enjoyed the grounds. It had some lovely buildings and a koi pond with some huge fish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Building on shrine grounds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Koi pond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After dinner we were entertained by two very funny comedians: Jim Brick<\/a> and Michael Isaac<\/a>. Then, against my better judgement, I went to the casino. But this time the slots relented and I won $35. Down $175 for the cruise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our third port, Aamori, lies less than 80 miles due south of Hakodate. The ship could probably make the trip in less than 5 hours. But why arrive before midnight when you can go out beyond the 12-mile limit and let passengers lose money all night? So that’s what we did, arriving around 7am. Aamori … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tp1"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-3pj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13101"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13681,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13101\/revisions\/13681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}