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MORIOKA |
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A former castle town on the confluence of three rivers, the small,
congenial city of MORIOKA is the terminus of the Tohoku Shinkansen. It
has no outstanding sights, but the attractive setting, range of
accommodation and interesting local cuisine make Morioka a good
overnight stop on the journey through northern Honshu. With a couple of
hours to spare, you could stretch your legs around the castle ruins and
some of the older neighbourhoods, or take a bus out to a rather bizarre
art museum. Additionally, Morioka is one of the main access points for
hikes around the nearby Hachimantai plateau .
The city has two major summer festivals . At the end of the rice-planting
season the Chagu-Chagu Umakko (June 15) features a fifteen-kilometre
procession of richly caparisoned horses, ending at the city's Hachiman-gu
shrine. Then, in early August (2-4), thousands of dancers parade through
town during the Sansa Odori , accompanied by flutes and drums, followed
by a general knees-up.
The City
The Nakatsu-gawa cuts through the centre of Morioka, flowing south
beneath the old castle walls and under a seventeenth-century bridge,
which is the pride of the city. From the station, located on the far
west side of town, it takes about twenty minutes to walk along Saien-dori,
one of Morioka's two major shopping streets, straight to the castle. If
you turn right in front of the castle park, Iwate-koen , and walk down
to the Nakatsu-gawa, you can pick up a pleasant riverside path to the
east of the old walls. Once the seat of the Nambu lords, Morioka castle
took 36 years to complete (1597-1633), only to be destroyed in the
battles surrounding the Meiji Restoration. From here, a right turn on
Odori , the city's foremost shopping street, and across the river via
the Naka-no-hashi bridge, will lead you towards to a remnant of the
older city.
Immediately over the river, you can't miss the ornate red-brick and grey-slate
facade of Iwate Bank , which dates from 1911. Inside, clerks still
bustle around the original banking hall with its high plastered ceiling,
elaborate woodwork and stone-flagged floor. Turn left beside the bank
and you'll come to a row of traditional Meiji-era buildings known as
Gozaku , whose centrepiece is a shop selling brushes, straw and wicker
goods. Stores opposite specialize in the region's most famous crafts -
heavy iron kettles and eye-catching cotton textiles dyed with intricate
patterns - while appetizing odours greet you at the top of the street
where a sembei shop turns out local-style rice crackers sprinkled with
sesame seeds or nuts; walk round the side and you can see the bakers
hard at work. The pale-blue clapboard building with a slender watch
tower across the road from the bakery was built at the beginning of the
nineteenth century and still functions as a fire station . Continuing
north to the next T-junction, to the right you'll find an old blackened
kura , a traditional storehouse, with a relaxed coffee shop, Issaryo ,
upstairs; turn left, however, and you reach the renowned seventeenth-century
bridge, Kami-no-hashi . In fact, the supports are all concrete nowdays,
and you'd be forgiven for missing the bridge's most important feature:
eighteen bronze, bulb-shaped topknots forged in the early 1600s which
ornament the railings.
Heading south along the river from Kami-no-hashi, the next major avenue
is Chuo-dori, lined with civic offices. About 400m west of the river, a
300-year-old cherry tree bulges out of a fifteen-centimetre-wide fissure
in a rounded granite boulder. Known as the ishiwari-sakura , or "rock-splitting
cherry", no one knows whether the tree really split the rock, but it's a
startling sight. If you follow Chuo-dori west to the Kitakami-gawa,
you'll reach a small neighbourhood known as Zaimoku-cho , whose main
feature is a traditional shopping street running parallel to the river.
Among smart modern boutiques there are a number of craftshops, notably
Kogensha (daily 10am-6pm, closed 15th of each month), with two outlets
on opposite sides of the street. They sell a good range of modern and
more traditional designs of ironware, paper, bamboo work and so on,
while at the back of their southerly larger outlet you'll find a coffee
shop in an attractive alley leading down to the river. Besides Kogensha,
the best selection and prices are found at Dento Kogeikan , a few
minutes' walk to the west of Kogensha (daily 10am-7pm).
If you're heading to Zaimoku-cho via the station, check out the Kitano
Minzoku Ichiba (Wed & Fri 2-7pm), a vegetable and fish market. Take a
left from the JR station, walk underneath the overpass and turn right on
the main road. After about a minute, you'll see stairs leading down to
what looks like a subway station but is in fact a basement walk-through
to the other side of the main road. The farmers are stationed under the
street.
The last of Morioka's central sights requires a bus ride out to the
rather eccentric Hashimoto Art Museum (daily 10am-5pm; ¥700) on the
town's eastern outskirts. Buses, which depart from Morioka Station,
don't run in winter (Dec to mid-March) and are infrequent at the best of
times (4-7 daily; 22min; ¥270), but are timed to give you about an hour
in the museum. Hashimoto Yaoji (1903-79), who designed the museum, was a
man of eclectic tastes: works by Courbet and Daubigny are followed by
local artists and Hashimoto's own dark, bold canvases. Other nooks and
crannies are stuffed with priceless ceramics, folk art, antique Western
furniture, festival gear and a wonderful collection of Nambu ironware
kettles. And, to cap it all, there's a complete magariya farmhouse
perched on the roof.
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