6.9.2018 - Day 22

 

For some reason I woke up at 7am. Apparently I got used to wake-up at that time. Sadly today I needed to sleep longer to make-up for the lack of sleep from previous day. To worsen things I think I have a slight cold from the temperature fluctuations that I went through in the few last days.

I picked my hotel between the Akita art museum and Kanto Festival Museum, which is a local festival that Akita is known for. The hearth of the festival is people balancing set of lanterns on bamboo poles. In the morning I walked over to the museum. I caught the end of an exhibition of how the pole lanterns are balanced (since there is a contest just before the main festival), there are four categories. On hand, forehead, hip and shoulder. To top things up they increase the height by adding to the main pole. When they increase the height the performers also change. The performance is accompanied by the sound of drums, flutes and chants of "dokkoisho, dokkoisho" from the onlookers. There are different sizes of the poles. At the end of the exhibition we were allowed to try out hand with the smallest pole lantern. I had a moment where I was able to hold it pretty balance, but other than that I was struggling pretty hard.

The performance area is a hall, three stories tall (so that they can show how high you can rise the lantern pole) and on the site there are additional exhibitions. Sadly all are in Japanese, but you can still make out many things, like the preparations for the festival and their excursions abroad to showcase the festival. More details are provided in the English brochure that you get at the entrance and you can also watch a movie (again only in Japanese) in the main hall which shows all the stages of the festival.

On the third floor there is another workshop area where a large taiko drum is setup for you to try to beat to the festival rhythm. Finally the last part of the museum is a house of a local textile merchant with store house.

After I spent considerable time at the museum I made my way back to Shinkansen and enjoyed the view on the country and mountains as I made my way back to Morioka. This pleasant time was only interrupted with and e-mail from Norika (from my trip to Shirakawa-go) that informed me about the devastating earthquake in Hokkaido that occurred that morning. It seems that I have escaped both the typhoon Jebi and the earthquake in a nick of time.

As the train was going to Sendai I was considering what to do next. Yamadera was on my path and my main goal for the region, but I was not felling well (fighting the cold) so I was considering leaving it for the next day, but when I looked on the time it would take from my travel and more importantly the weather forecast for the next day was rain so after admiring the mountains for almost an hour I got off at Yamadera and scrambled to get into the shrine complex before closing time. Once I was inside I had plenty of time to climb the 1000 steps up to the temples and the view. The atmosphere was magical and I felt much better. Finally I reached the main observation spot from which I got spectacular view on the surrounding, which was made even better by the coloring from descending sun. After I made it back to the station I got few more shots of the twilight above the valley and mountain ranges bellow.

Arriving in Yamagata was a standard procedure of getting into the hotel, dinner and sleep. For a moment I considered going to the last remaining leg of the Shinkansen to Shinjo, but only local Shinkansen went there so it took too much time, so I decided to start my next day from Yamagata going south. After all it is called Yamagata Shinkansen.