InHokkaido

A Blog about Hokkaido, Photography and other interesting things out there.

Tag: Tohoku (page 1 of 1)

October 13, 2019 / 0 Comments

Climbing Fukushima’s Mount Bandai

In the beginning of May 2019, I climbed Mount Bandai with a friend from the Photography Club of Tohoku University (東北大学学友会写真部). We rented a car in the morning and drove to the foot of Mount Bandai from Sendai, which took about 2h using the high way.

The weather was beautiful and no other cars were parked at the trail head – probably because the hiking season was only just about to start in Japan.

This time around, I only took a film camera along.

The beginning of the climb was through a ski area which was hardly exciting atall, however we quickly reached the Red Swamp (赤沼), now a lake infront of Mount Bandai.

The trail was well built out although still wet from the melting snow.

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August 21, 2019 / 0 Comments

A Quick Hike Up Sendai’s Izumigatake

Izumigatake (泉ヶ岳) is the Hausberg (local mountain) of Sendai. Actually, there are two – namely Mt Taihaku (太白山) but its elevation is with 320.7m much lower. The main peak of Izumigatake is 1172m high while the north peak (北泉ヶ岳) rises 1253m over sea level.

The main building of the Izumidake Nature Centre

Izumigatake boasts a smallish ski area and at the foot of the mountain a Nature Exhibition Centre. You can camp there, do BBQ or inform yourself about the nature in the region. The best part about the Centre is though, that a bus goes straight to it four times per day from Izumichuo Station (泉中央駅). You can see the bus schedule from Izumichuo Station to Izumidake Shizen Fureai-kan (泉岳自然ふれあい館) here and the bus schedule from the Nature Centre back to Izumichuo Station here. The bus ride takes about 50mins and costs 720jpy one way as of April 2019. The website of Izumidake Shizen Fureai-kan (泉岳自然ふれあい館) can be found here.

Izumigatake trail head
The trail head of the hike up Izumigatake

The there are multiple trails up the mountain but the main course up Izumigatake is called Sujin course (水神コース) and from the trail head its about 3.7km and 630m in elevation change to the summit.

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July 26, 2019 / 7 Comments

A Winter Trip to Aomori: Mount Hakkoda & Lake Towada

This is part 2 of 2 of a blog post about a trip to Aomori prefecture in the winter. See part one here: link. Winter in Aomori means lots an lots of snow, during the three days there we visited the Hirosaki Snow Lantern Festival (previous post), Mount Hakkoda, Lake Towada and Mount Hakkoda again! Find out more below…

After clearing the streets of snow, it has to be taken somewhere…

The weather was luckily completely clear on the next day, without any snowfall – yet. Or at least around Hirosaki city.

Driving towards the mountains

As soon as we slowly closed in on the foot of Mount Hakkoda, snow was starting to pile up again. The streets were bordered by huge walls of snow.

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July 25, 2019 / 4 Comments

A winter trip to Aomori: Hirosaki Snow Lantern Festival

In February 2019 a teamed up with a long time friend over a long weekend (3 days and 2 nights), which are very common in Japan, to visit the prefecture Aomori. Aomori is the northern most prefecture of Japan on the main island and is famous for getting the most snow in winter. The main objectives were the Hirosaki Snow Lantern Festival and the Lake Towada with the neighbouring mountain Hakkoda.

Warm water sprinklers on a 7-11 convenience store parking lot to hopelessly try to keep the ice at bay

In fact, the worlds snowiest city is located in Aomori. To get around the prefecture we rented a car for the three days we spent there.

The Tsugaru stove train platform

We drove to the city of Tsugaru (つがる市) first to ride a stove train. Basically a normal train where food (usually fish) is sold on the train and the carriages have small stoves where you can roast it on.

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November 14, 2018 / 1 Comment

Traversing Mt Iwate in November (Yakehashiri to Matsukawa Onsen)

After having looked into climbing Mt Iwate previously, I kind of spontaneously decided Thursday that it’s going to happen on Friday (2nd November 2018), after having seen the stellar weather forecast.

I left Sendai station (仙台駅) at 19:19towards Morioka station (盛岡駅), the capital of Iwate-ken (岩手県). There I bought some last food (onigiri of course) and a cup at Daiso before boarding the bus A52 at 20:47 towards Obuke station (大更駅). The plan was to arrive at Obuke, hang around and then walk towards the Yakehashiri Trail Head (焼け走り登山口), map

However, as I was looking at Google maps while on the bus, I decided on a whim to get off at a stop which was a lot closer to the trail head, called Sankorin (参考林). It was basically in the middle of nowhere but there was a FamilyMart close by, where I could spend time until leaving for Mt Iwate.

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