One day Aomori City itinerary: apples, festivals and more!

I stopped over in a very snowy Aomori on my recent Sapporo and Tohoku trip. Aomori is famous for apples and festivals, and regardless of what time of year you visit, you can find out more about both in this one day Aomori city itinerary!

You probably don’t need more than a day in Aomori city itself unless you’re doing side visits or day trips (Hirosaki, Lake Towada or Mount Hakkoda for example) but I really enjoyed my time here.

A-Factory in Aomori from outside. It is VERY snowy. — *Needs more snow.*

My visit took place in February, as you can probably tell from the photos! Tohoku and Hokkaido had received a huge amount of snowfall, with Obhiro in Hokkaido actually having a record-breaking amount of snowfall in a 12-hour period (it was on Japanese news constantly). Unlike Sapporo and Sendai, I found that fewer pathways had been cleared in Aomori so getting around took a bit more effort. If you’re visiting in winter make sure to take solid shoes and a warm coat.

Here’s what I got up to in Aomori.

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Sample some of Aomori’s finest apple products at A-Factory

Aomori grows over 50 varieties of apple and is very proud of the fact. You can pretty much buy anything apple-related you like! Although you can purchase products from stations, convenience stores and tourist shops, I headed to A-Factory, which is very close to Aomori station.

A MASSIVE apple. It cost £2.50 and is way bigger than my hand

A poster detailing 100 Aomori apples of all different colours. They range from yellow to a dark red.

A-Factory is spread out over two floors, the upper floor being a restaurant, and downstairs being a shop floor and small food court. There is so much to look at here! There were souvenirs, cider and apple juice (A-Factory makes its own cider on the premises), apple tea, apple mochi, freeze-dried apples, apple cakes, you name it – they sell it.

Apple-themed goods for sale in A-Factory. Some of the souvenirs are tote bags, apple tea, mugs, and apples.

Cider for sale at A-Factory. There are rows of bottles.

In the food court they sell apple pie and you can even get ice cream in three apple flavours. Despite the weather I went for the sweet ‘Fuji’ flavour which was sweet and tasted like Braeburn apples. I also bought some apple tea and an apple pie to take back to the hotel, both of which were delicious.

A-Factory shuts at 7pm which is worth bearing in mind if you’re wanting to eat here. Some of the stores in A-Factory also have set days that they operate so it’s worth checking out when they’ll be open before you visit.

Exterior of the museum Nebuta Wa Rasse. It's a cool building - red railings that look like a curtain

Experience an iconic Japanese festival at Nebuta Wa Rasse

Aomori is famous for the Nebuta festival held in August, where people dance and carry illuminated floats down the streets, before sending some of them out on barges into the bay area.

Even if you’re not visiting Aomori in August, you can still kind of experience the festival for yourself at the festival’s museum, called Nebuta Wa Rasse. This museum was one of the real highlights of my visit to Aomori!

It cost 620 yen to enter (about £3.50/ $4.50), and inside they have a brief section on the history of the festival and there are some hands-on things you can do too, like creating your own oni character which is projected on a screen. You can see my attempt below!

Oni face at Nebuta wa Rasse. It has fearsome eyes and an open mouth and a moustache

Although the explainers are in Japanese you can scan a QR code to read more in English. It had just about the right amount of information.

However, this is just the start!

Float at Nebute Wa Rasse. There's two men fighting and a tiger. The float is lit from within and is very colourful.

See some 3d artwork

As you go round the corner, you come face to face with one of the amazing floats. These things are huge and are stunning – they look just like an ink brush painting, come to life! Whilst in the festival itself there are over 20 floats, the museum has 4 large ones from the previous year, and some smaller ones. The rest of the floats are destroyed, with new ones made for the following year.

There are some mini floats in various states of manufacture that you can touch. They are made from wire and paper, and are then painted and lit from within.

Demon on a float at Nebuta Wa Rasse. He's wielding a stick and there's water rushing over him!

The craftmanship is honestly unbelievable – these are actual works of art. The floats take a whole year to make and cost around $50,000 – you can definitely see why! Each time I walked around each of the larger floats I saw something new – a flower pattern on a shirt, a hairy armpit, the texture of a dragon’s chin or the curved nails of an oni. It was amazing. There are explainers as to what myth or story has inspired the float too. There’s a 10 minute video played every half hour, which talks about the festival itself and the musicians and dancers. It has English subtitles and was recent – the video I saw featured floats from the previous year.

Float detail at Nebuta Wa Rasse. There's a man with a colourful bird and a snake at his side.

‘Take part’ in the festival yourself!

At set times of the day, there is a demonstration of the music and dancing that happens during the festival. It’s in Japanese but that doesn’t really matter, you can get the gist of what is happening. The music comes from flutes, hand cymbals and taiko drums. As with my trip to the Matsuri no Mori museum in Takayama, I was surprised once again to hear how loud the taiko drums were – I got goosebumps! You also get taught the dance people do during the festival. I couldn’t believe people dance like this for hours – especially in August – I could barely make it for five minutes!

You can then even have a go of some of the instruments yourselves, and then after a practice, you can put it all together and dance and play together! It was a lot of fun.

Three people are leading a music and dancing session at the Nebuta Wa Rasse museum that you can take part in. There's someone on a flute and someone on a taiko drum.

There’s a small souvenir shop at the end of the museum with some festival-related merchandise as well as apple items. I’m not a huge mochi fan but I bought some apple mochi here that was delicious.

(For more souvenirs, you can visit the tourist information, which is the massive triangle building along the waterfront).

Dragon fountain at the water purifcation basin at Hirota shrine. There are apples in the water and three little glass apples, one green, one red, one yellow in the background.

Visit some shrines

I rounded off my time in Aomori visiting some of the shrines in the city. I started off visiting Hirota Shrine. Shrines often put flowers in their water purification basins however when I visited in February they had apples in there. You can also buy omikuji (fortunes) that are contained in a little papier mache apple!

I really liked some of the omamori designs that they had available, which weren’t like any I had seen before. You can pick the bag design you like and then the prayer or wish you want, which then gets added to the bag (you’re not supposed to open the bag by the way). It cost 1000 yen (500 for each item – you can’t really just get a bag on its own). Don’t forget that shrines are places of worship and so it’s good practice to pray at the shrine before buying items at the store.

From Hirota shrine, I went over to Utou Shrine, which is Aomori’s main shrine and at least 1200 years old(!) There is a pond with a red bridge over it and a dragon fountain, although with the sheer amount of snowfall I didn’t get to see much of it as you can tell!

Although the snow restricted what I was able to see at both shrines, the shrine buildings and the torii gates looked beautiful in the snow.

Other things you can do!

The two things in Aomori city that I didn’t have time to visit were the Aomori Museum of Art (which looked amazing) and the Sannai Maruyama Archaeological site, which has a preserved Jomon village and a museum. You could potentially swap out visiting some of the shrines and visit these areas instead.