Futatsumori is a gentle hilltop near the town of Shichinohe in Aomori prefecture, overlooking Lake Ogawara, and to an untrained eye it is simply a grassy field among woods and farmland. But this is one of the largest shell mounds in the Tōhoku region, piled up by Jōmon people over thousands of years as they gathered shellfish from the lake and the sea, and it belongs to the same World Heritage group of Jōmon sites as the better-known Sannai-Maruyama. The shell heaps, rich in calcium, neutralised the acid soil and preserved bones, tools and ornaments that would otherwise have dissolved.
What makes Futatsumori particularly interesting is how the shell content changes over time. In earlier layers, the shells are mostly seawater species; later layers are freshwater clams, which tells archaeologists that Lake Ogawara was once an inlet of the sea and gradually became a lake as the coastline shifted. Bone needles, harpoons and even the buried remains of dogs show people living in close relationship with their environment and their animals. It is an archaeology of daily life rather than of kings.
Lake Ogawara itself is a large, shallow lake fed by rivers from the Hakkōda mountains and draining to the Pacific, famous for shijimi clams, smelt and eels. The landscape around is open, rolling and pastoral, with dairy farms, vegetable fields, and wide skies. In autumn, swans and other migrating birds gather on the water. The Hakkōda range to the west, with its volcanoes, hot springs and dense beech forests, is one of the great riding destinations of northern Japan.
The roads here are quiet and well surfaced, with some gentle curves through the farmland and around the lake shore, and in summer they are a joy. In winter, however, Aomori is one of the snowiest places in the world, and roads in the Hakkōda mountains are closed for months; spring brings the famous snow corridors on the Hakkōda-Towada Gold Line, where the snow walls can be several metres high when the road reopens. Misawa, fifteen kilometres off and home to a large air base, is where to refuel and eat properly. Shichinohe is smaller but has basics. Try the local garlic and Aomori apples.