blue forest
low photo count day. i didn’t sleep super well last night, so i took it easy after my travel to aomori today.
aomori
today i traveled from sendai to aomori, one of the northernmost cities on japan’s main island of honshu, and the capital of aomori prefecture.
aomori means “blue (ao) forest (mori)”. it can technically also mean green forest, because japanese only recently, historically speaking, had a word that meant “green”. i am not a language nerd so i am far from an expert on this subject, but for example, they call green traffic lights “ao” which means blue. my limited research on the subject says that the japanese word for green, midori, wasn’t a widespread thing until post world war 2. and interestingly enough, i see グリーン (guriin) used pretty frequently for green things. the fancy train car is called the “green car” and its usually written as グリーン rather than using the actual japanese word for green. language is crazy, i guess.
anyway, aomori means blue forest because according to wikipedia, there used to be a forest on a hill nearby. it is a port town, so i find it interesting that they named it after a nearby forest instead of something more obvious and applicable. they built a city on the ocean and said “lets name it after those trees on that hill over there”. meanwhile america will go “yeah lets call it oceanside”. but actually i was doing research for this bit and learned that encinitas means “little oaks” because a spanish explorer in the 1700s saw oak trees here. so i guess all cultures build cities on the ocean and name them after trees.
wanderin’
i have no idea what to do around here. i kinda picked this city because i knew i was going to sendai and sapporo, and needed stops in between. in retrospect, i maybe could have cut either this city or the next one to add more time in sendai. i feel kinda bad that i spent 2 days in sendai and basically didn’t see any of it because i went to other cities both days.
but i am in aomori now, no time for regret. after dropping my bags at the hotel, i went back out and just walked around for a bit. i tried walking directly towards the ocean, but i kept hitting big “do not enter” signs when i got close. this seems to be a pretty industrial area, and the specific part of aomori i am in does not seem super touristy or interesting to explore. there are also a lot of abandoned / dilapidated buildings around here.
i did find a pier that had a few people fishing on it, and got some photos of there. but it was coooooooold. and i wasn’t wearing a jacket because i am a fool.
went back to the hotel room and crashed early after this.
