At the foot of Mount Iwaki, the solitary volcano that rises above the Tsugaru plain in Aomori prefecture, there is a flat terrace where people of the Jomon period laid out a large oval ring of stones a few thousand years ago. The Omori Katsuyama stone circle is one of the sites that make up the Jomon Prehistoric Sites of Northern Japan, listed by UNESCO in 2021, and it is a quiet, grassy place where you can stand in the middle and look straight up at the mountain the builders must have looked at every day.
The Jomon were hunter-gatherers who lived in settled villages for more than ten thousand years, fishing, collecting nuts and making some of the oldest pottery in the world, decorated with cord-marked patterns that gave the culture its name. Stone circles such as this one belong to the later part of the period and seem to have been places of ritual and burial. Their exact meaning is still debated, which suits the atmosphere: there are no reconstructed buildings, just the stones, the grass and the view.
The site lies within Hirosaki city, the historic castle town of the Tsugaru domain, known for its cherry blossoms in late April and for apples, which are grown in orchards all around the base of the mountain. In autumn the trees are heavy with fruit and the roadside stands sell them by the bag.
For riders, the great attraction nearby is the Tsugaru Iwaki Skyline, a toll road that climbs the flank of Mount Iwaki through a famous sequence of sixty-nine numbered hairpins to a car park at around the eighth station, from where a lift and a path go on toward the summit. It is a tight, steep, technical climb with superb views across the plain to the Sea of Japan, and it is closed in winter, usually from autumn to spring because of the heavy snow; check the opening dates before you go. The roads around the mountain through the orchards are gentle and pretty, and the coast road on the west side is wild and empty.
Fuel is easy in Hirosaki, and the larger towns of Goshogawara and Aomori are both within half an hour. Hirosaki's cafés and noodle shops make a good base, and the castle park is a lovely place to sit after a day in the saddle.