On the outskirts of Aomori, at the northern tip of Honshu, archaeologists working on a site for a baseball stadium in the early 1990s found the remains of a large village of the Jomon period, a hunter gatherer culture that lived in Japan for over ten thousand years. Sannai Maruyama was occupied for around a thousand years, from about 5,900 to 4,200 years ago, and its finds changed ideas about the Jomon: long houses, pit dwellings, storehouses, burial grounds, and a huge structure of six massive chestnut posts, now reconstructed as a tall wooden tower. In 2021 it became part of the World Heritage listing of Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan.
The site is now a park with reconstructed buildings and a museum displaying pottery, clay figurines, lacquerware and jade ornaments. The Jomon made some of the oldest pottery in the world, decorated with cord markings, which gave the culture its name. Entry to the site and parts of the museum is free.
Aomori is a port city on Mutsu Bay, famous for apples, scallops and the Nebuta festival in early August, when giant illuminated floats of warriors and demons are paraded through the streets. The Nebuta Museum, by the station, displays floats all year round.
The riding around Aomori is outstanding. South of the city, the Hakkoda mountains rise to over fifteen hundred metres, and the road over them, Route 103 and Route 394, is a superb ride through beech forest and past hot springs such as Sukayu Onsen, with its huge cypress bath. Further south, Lake Towada and the Oirase gorge are famous for autumn colours. Winter snow is extremely heavy, and the mountain roads are closed or difficult from late autumn to spring.
Aomori handles fuel, cash and food. Order the scallops, eat an apple or two, and the miso curry milk ramen, an Aomori curiosity that is better than it sounds. Summer is mild and pleasant, autumn is glorious, and winter is long and snowy.