A Week in Tōhoku: The best of Japan’s North! | Aomori, Yamagata, Morioka

Let’s travel to Japan’s hidden gem of an area: Tohoku! This cluster of prefectures gets visited by less than 2% of the total volume of tourists in the country, and honestly I strongly recommend you become a part of this percentage before the masses learn about everything Tohoku has to offer! We’ve taken JR trains between Yamagata, Aomori and Morioka and learned that this area is absolutely jam packed with culture, stunning nature begging to be hiked upon, photo opportunities, local food specialties and also.. dogs!

For reference, we’ve done this trip at the end of October – as you can tell, autumn and autumn leaves happen much sooner in Tohoku than they do in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka! So if you want to see some stunning foliage but can’t visit Japan towards end of November, that’s another reason to go to Tohoku for ya!

#tohoku #japanvlog #japantravelguide

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Thumbnail image credits:
Akita Inu dog: Ivan Radic
Mt Iwate: Yuichi Shiraichi

[Applause] Hello my peeps this is k aka kakibot and this is kaky bot’s guide book and today I am taking you outside of UK even outside of Europe because we are in Japan and I’ve decided to make two videos about traveling around Japan this time we are here for a month a bulk of

It in Tokyo but I’m not going to be making any videos anymore about that because I think there’s enough videos about Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto on the internet however some of the areas that we are going to I feel like very underappreciated so um yeah I’ve decided

To take you along with us in this video we are going Northeast into tohoku which is this like cluster of prefectures north of Tokyo apparently some of the areas up in tohoku which you know some of the areas that are actually supposed to be popular get less than 2% of the

Total volume of visitors that do go to Japan visiting it so I don’t know that’s a shame because they do seem great and I’m very excited to go there and I’m even more excited to take you with us doesn’t matter if you’re into City Life or food or little adventures because we

Are going to show you all all righty I can’t wait to show you to Hoku let’s Go we took the train from Tokyo Station and started our week-long Explorations in Yamagata both the city and the eponymous prefecture this city felt quiet but right after a working week in Tokyo this was very much needed apart from the train station area the city basically lacks any high-rise buildings so you can

Really enjoy all the mountains looming over it and there’s also a pretty castle area which is supposed to be wonderful during the Sakura season but even the autumn leaves were Nice after a long day of travels we’ve decided to have an evening filled with little treats starting with this Artisan coffee house after that we’ve walked around some more the city felt really quiet but this is Japan so it also felt very very Safe Just behind the Yamagata Folk Museum we found this chocolate and Patisserie shop and picked up a personman cake just in case you didn’t know this a little fun fact Kaki which is kind of my nickname is also Japanese for pmen so this fruit is literally calling to me and to top it

All off a beautiful pork KATU at the train station now let me tell you this was Peak crunchiness we also tried some makaku a local specialty kyaku balls cooked in Dashi served with Mustard from what I’ve seen many people stay here mostly to then embark on various day trips there are many on sense in the area Plus Beautiful temples and also winter sports resorts our plan for day two was to to visit the Mountain Temple of yamadera but we didn’t want to

Go first thing in the morning to not climb in the sweltering heat of midday instead we head a bit of a bonus City exploration First Now yamadera is just about half an hour away by train from Yamagata station so a really easy trip possibly doable in half a day we celebrated our arrival with some soba another meal that is typical for this perfecture this is a chewy but wheat noodle usually dipped in flavorful

Broth I would love to hear in the comment section below what type of Japanese or just widely Asian noodle is your favorite yay we made it to yamadera which is actually the main reason why we went to Yamagata to start with this is one of Japan’s power spots meaning uh if you do

Make it here and you do climb all of the thousand plus steps then uh you should be getting some good luck in return so that is exactly what we’re going to do today it is quite warm and it is kind of close to midday so I’m hoping to not get

Uh some sort of like fun fun heat stroke but uh I think that the luck I’m going to get for climbing this is worth it let’s do This A the climb up was really a lot less challenging than I feared probably due to all the stops one takes to enjoy the scenery plus it is just so worth it with stunning views over the Valley this was a work day which I would recommend as opposed to weekend I think you’re really going to have a lot more space to enjoy the serenity of this power Spot Oh [Applause] before saying goodbye to Yamagata we stopped by kajo Central do yourself a favor and take the elevator to the top floor to watch the sunset over mountain ranges it is just the perfect goodbye do the City a new day a new prefecture today it’s alore and we are actually in alore City the capital of alore prefecture alori is famous for apples for paper floats and also a lot of kids I think because we have already tried to shoot this like five times and there’s always some

Screaming going on so thankfully I do find these kids extremely cute so I’ll I’ll get over it okay uh the journey here was kind of semi complicated we had to take three different trains I think that if you’re in to Hoku for the first time ever and you’ve never been to Cai

It would be probably the smartest to take another stop for like two nights in Sendai we didn’t do that because we’ve been to Sendai twice already so um if you are watching this and you’re planning a trip to tohoku maybe do that uh but for us we wanted to go straight

To alore and we’re going to now check out what’s uh available to do here in the city and tomorrow we’re going on a little day Trip oh Mor is quiet I don’t want to use the term dead because I feel like that would disuade people from visiting and that would be a Pity because I guess what I’m struggling to put in towards here is that this is a town where you can see in photograph This Charming 70c

Vibe in wonderful peace and serenity it’s a city that many Travelers use as a little stopover before traveling onto Hokkaido or possibly even further as it seems like there are many fairy connections landing and departing from here due to this most of the more obvious tourist hotspots are by the

Train station and fery landings first of all you have the a factory a very food Centric souvenir shop an absolute must for anyone wanting to try local apples apple juice or alcoholic cider they do have a lot of kinds and I do recommend having a little taste test at the hotel Room right next to it you will find the nebuta Museum filled with local paper lantern floats these things are absolutely humongous and being able to walk right next to them was amazing and really all inspiring up close you really have to appreciate the artisanal skill going into these seeing the paper and

Ink textures backlit by lamps for me this is absolutely a must visit Museum Next morning we started by grabbing some tasty coffee from this ever so Charming coffee shop called litan sorry if I butchered the name as it is often the case with Japanese coffeee shops The Brew here is on the bitter side and is made with just so much care that however

Means that it might take longer than expected so don’t order coffees if you’re in a Hurry good morning we are at the toim national park here in aori we took a bus from the alore station some of those buses take about an hour some of them hour and a half hours to hour and a half but uh there are beautiful views

Most of the drive so I recommend either length doesn’t really matter uh we are here to get up to hakoda Mountain it’s actually a range of volcanoes still active so that’s always fun but then again in Japan that kind of uh comes comes with the the whole deal uh we are

Going to take the ropeway this is the bottom stage of the ropeway I think it takes about 10 minutes to get all the way up there we are actually quite high up already but um I do believe that the highest point of hakoda is about 1,500 M

So uh I think we should have some absolutely spectacular views from the cable car pod I can’t wait it is so autom new today I am really excited On top of Mount hakoda you can either just chill for a while with a hot coffee enjoy the views or you can go on one of the local hiking trails we picked one of the shorter ones we wanted to make sure we will make it back on time for the bus

Now this Trail was still about 90 minutes long and I think due to the snow that was still melting around the area it was quite muddy which explains why earlier I noticed that there were some Wellies available to borrow at the cable car station well too late for them Out My main tip here would be getting to the bus stop for your trip back at least 30 minutes in advance because this is not the bus’s first stop on the way back to alore so um there will perhaps not be that many spaces left on the bus um yeah

Well we had to take a 50 Quid cab back to the city which is honestly not that horrid considering it took almost an hour but still we could have spent that on noodles instead we got dropped off at one of the local bakeries to try some apple pie

Because again Omi famous for apples now Japan is not too fond on Cinnamon so these pastries are kind of mild but by no means bad if you like your Apple sweet and pastri is full of layers and crunch you will be more than Happy Today let me welcome you to the iwat prefecture we are in morio city which is iwat capital it is a pretty easy day trip to make from either Tokyo or Cai and s i tends to be that sort of first trip that people make into tohoku area

So if that’s where you’re starting do yourself a favor visit moroka we have been around for a while now and we are really loving it um this is a city which has this sort of European feel almost to me it has this beautiful River area and the most stunning view of Mount iwat

Which is kind of a Fuji like presence on the horizon So today we’re going to be exploring moroka we’re going to show you everything we love about it and tomorrow we are going to stop by a whole new prefecture aita woof now can you guess what the mascot of marioa is it’s a

Little bowl of noodles because that’s what marioa is famous for three local noodle Specialties also known as the three great noodles of moroka that’s the Korean style raymen the mey meso Chinese style jaman and also the Light buckweed based wos SOA for us this was a night to

Try jaman in a small local noodle shop where the owner managed to have an amazing banra with us despite the solid language Barrier Next day we decided to walk all around the city the uchimaru area which I think is just so charming and the sakurayama shrine located right next to the Castle Park and from there we walked toward the local temple area too my favorite spot was the hongi temple no known for 500

Statues of Buddhist disciples it is however also seated under these huge beautiful peaceful trees just guaranteed to take all of your travel worries Away He A Okay for today’s half day trip we chose kakunodate and kakun is a former Castle town and a former Samurai stronghold now the castle is not here anymore but the samurai quarter is still in a really good condition even after 400 years that is how long these houses have been

Around you can pop into some of them some of them for a fee some of them kind of for free you can explore around there’s also a little Art Gallery there are also Akitas because guess what we are actually in a new prefecture today we are in Akita perfecture which is

Obviously the home of the Akita Inu dog um so if you think like oh would it be nice to meet some dogs here uh you will as we will show you soon excited this is also one of tohoku’s top Sakura spots uh obviously this is

Awesome as you can tell uh this is kind of getting way past Autumn Peak now here in the mountains but um it’s still beautiful I think so if you come maybe a bit earlier in October that might be perfect and if you’re here in Spring then you absolutely cannot miss the

Sakuras here in kakunodate kakun is perfect if you want to feel like you stepped into a whole other Century just walk through the merchant quarter into the samurai residential neighborhood and maybe pick up a little pudding on the way wink wink nud Nudge There is also a local who will actually let you come say hi to her Akitas for a tiny fee personally I am more than game to pay to pet a cute dog I mean wouldn’t you look at her Is so before we say our final bye-bye to moroka let’s try another one of those great noodle dishes this evening it’s going to be a bowl of Mario caran an amazing refreshing gold noodle with a light but well spiced broth very Korean style loved it and so we made it to the

End of our big tohoku adventure and uh I am really quite sad I had a great time and uh especially here in moroka I really liked this city like I kept thinking I know I always say that I always come to a new city and the

Weather is great and I spent like two days there and I always think like oh I could live here but honestly out of all the cities I’ve been to in tohoku I think that moroka is the best one um even just like this little area around

The river is so Charming to me it’s so again so European uh which you know I don’t that probably sounds weird but I just wanted to say that in the other cities where we’ve been uh there just wasn’t nearly as much kind of like youthful energy in how the city feels

How it feels to exist in it and enjoy the little shops and cafes and this sort of situation so that’s been a lot of fun and I’m really sad to be leaving moroka and I don’t know when it’s going to be the next opportunity to come here again

But uh I’m going to try I’m going to try to return ideally next time if I manage to bring my sister uh I would love to bring her here because this has been a lot of fun one thing that I forgot to mention in the start when I was

Introducing moroka is that this is where uh one of my favorite OG J vloggers used to live which is Charla who is now engaged to one of my favorite YouTubers ever Chris broad speaking of people and being connected to them I do have to say that uh moroka and tohoku in general

Doesn’t seem to have that many people in it which I mean in the best way possible um when you come from Tokyo Tokyo right now compared to how it was during our first trip ever which was was 9 years ago um is very busy and lot of the

Places that I would normally recommend you going to are just it it’s just so many people it just gets uh it gets quite overwhelming and it’s quite hard to enjoy it the way I would like you to enjoy it it’s because it’s just too busy just too many people even at night where

Like traditionally it got quite emptied out uh tohoku is the opposite of that there’s just like so much to see and so many places I would recommend visiting most of them you know from this video and just nobody nobody is here like every day you would meet like I don’t

Know like two other tourists especially here in moroka the sort of balance feels really off in that this seems to be a really youthful really fun city with quite a lot to offer to tourists to visitors from abroad and yet none of them come

Here and like why why is that so if you do want to enjoy Japan the same way as we did those almost 10 years ago I think you should definitely come to tohoku okay I think that is truly it uh I am going to go and enjoy my last night here

In moroka which I totally fell in love with uh I yeah I’m going to go uh eat more noodles I think because marioa city of noodle okay I hope you enjoy this video uh let me know if you’ve ever been to tohoku oh and if you enjoy this video

And if you like my face and if you want to know what I’m up to you can always visit me on Instagram say hi send me a message there that either under CI blog where I share most of my travel stuff and kind of like lot of Scotland and

Edinburgh based content or you can visit me on Kaki bot which is more of my art and illustration and design based account yes okay say hi and I shall see you Soon