osaka-akita

From Osaka, it is about an hour and fifteen minutes to Akita Prefecture.

The airport has bus service into Akita city, but since we were going to Kakunodate, we booked a taxi.

The type of taxi was a "share" type...50 minutes later we were in a village that has many samurai residences.

The Ishiguro residence is the only one with actual family descendants still living in it.

It was awesome to be able to see a couple of the rooms of their home.

We were also lucky as it is close to Hinamatsuri, so they had their doll display out. (these are the top rows,

　and these are the bottom ones.

Next door was the Aoyagi residence.

This property was huge!

6 different buildings to wander through with all sorts of samurai swords and armor.

Akita has a sweet called "butter mochi", I thought it might be similar to the type we have in Hawaii, but since it had artificial sweeteners in it, we didn't try any.

Instead, I purchased kurumimochi (walnut mochi), which the area is also known for.

This was slightly sweet though I wish it had more nuts in/on it.

How is this grandpa?! shoveling snow off his roof...so many deaths during this time of year from people falling off their rooftops...though if they don't take the snow off their roof will cave in from the heavy snow.

We also checked out Ando Shoyu where I purchased this mountain greens to cook with rice.

I'm gonna use it in the coming weeks.

I also stumbled upon their kasanemochi (the stacked decorative mochi for New Years) which they hang to dry then fry up as "kakimochi".

Apparently this had been drying since the year before!

Another taxi picked us up and 50 minutes later we were at Nyuto Onsen, an area with several hot spring facilities.

After lunch of Hinaidori (the brand chicken of Akita) oyakodon for me and Nabeyaki udon for Satoshi, we were off to the hot springs.

Satoshi went to 3 different ones while I just went to the one that was next door to where we were staying.

If you are following us on Instagram, you know dinner was huge.

There was all sorts of foods, nabe (hot pot) with hinaidori, sashimi (swordfish, sweet shrimp and cod cured in kelp), simmered rockfish, snow crab tempura, rice with ikura (salmon roe), just to name some of the dishes.

I loved the handwoven baskets that we could use to put our towel and clothes in when we went to bathe in the hot springs.

And most of the doors had different sayings in Akita dialect.

Ours was "garitto" (gah-ree-toe) which means "isshokenmei" (ee-show-ken-may) in standard Japanese and in English means to do something with all one's effort.

It was a long day, lots of snow and lots of eating.

Ishiguro Samurai Residence
1-banchi Kakunodate-machiomote-machishimocho
Senboku, Akita
Phone: 0187.55.1496

Aoyagi Samurai Residence
3 Kakunodate-machiomote-machishimocho
Senboku, Akita
Phone: 0187.54.3257

Kyukamura Nyuto Onsen
2-1 Komagatake, Lake Tazawa
Senboku, Akita
Phone: 0187.46.2244