Aomori

The red steel-ribbon building just seaward of the station holds several full-size nebuta that won prizes that year. A few times a day musicians play the drum and flute rhythm live, and the audience learns the hopping step that goes with it.

A large Jomon settlement lived in for more than 1,500 years, added to UNESCO's heritage roll in 2021. A tower rebuilt on six chestnut pillars 1m across stands in the field, and the prefectural art museum is a few minutes' walk away.

Three of the four huge backdrops Chagall painted for the ballet Aleko fill a single hall four storeys high. Outside in a sunken court stands Yoshitomo Nara's white dog Aomori-ken, 8.5m tall, with people queueing to photograph it.

About 10 minutes carries you from the foot to the summit park station, where from January to February the trees stand sheathed in rime as snow monsters. Top and bottom differ so much in temperature that some autumn days still need winter clothes up there.

The great bath, Sennin-buro, is built of hiba cypress, mixed, and as big as 160 tatami mats. An hour each morning and evening is set aside for women only, and during mixed hours the only thing dividing the sexes is a single marker standing in the water.

A 14km trail traces the stream draining Lake Towada, and buses stop at points on the road beside it, so you can walk a single stretch. Around Choshi Otaki, the biggest fall, is busiest, and in late October roadside parking is blocked and you ride a shuttle.

A caldera lake filling a collapsed volcano, with Kotaro Takamura's 1953 bronze of two facing maidens on its shore. Cruise boats link Yasumiya with Nenokuchi, where the Oirase stream begins, and they stop running in winter.

One of the 12 castles in Japan whose Edo-period keep survives, ringed by 2,600 cherry trees. When the petals fall in late April they cover the outer moat in pink. The train from Aomori station takes less than an hour.

The railway ferry that linked Aomori and Hakodate until the Seikan Tunnel opened in 1988, still afloat at the pier. Real freight wagons sit on the car deck below, showing exactly how trains were loaded aboard.

A seaside onsen village about 20 minutes by train from Aomori station; from the ryokan open-air baths you watch the sun come up over Mutsu Bay. The footbath by the station costs nothing, so plenty of people soak their feet there until their train comes.

Opened in 2008 on Towada's avenue of government offices, galleries set apart as white boxes linked by glass corridors. A woman sculpted nearly ceiling-high stands inside; the flower-covered horse outside and the park works across the road are free to see.

A wooden bridge laid in 1994 over Tsugaru Fujimi Lake in Tsuruta, three arches spanning nearly 300m, counted as Japan's longest triple-arch timber bridge. On windless mornings the lake mirrors both bridge and Mount Iwaki, and crossing it is free.

One of the Juniko lakes below the Shirakami Mountains, its water blue as spilled ink, hence the name Blue Pond. It shows bluest at midday with the sun high, and the Gono line's sightseeing train along the coast makes the trip there part of the outing.

Hundreds of stalls lining some 800m of Hachinohe's harbour wall, held only on Sunday mornings from mid-March to December. It opens around sunrise and packs up by about nine, so leave before dawn and eat breakfast of fresh fritters and coffee facing the sea.

A sacred site in the volcanic heart of the Shimokita Peninsula, its grey sulphur-reeking rock fields and the white sands of Lake Usori likened to the afterlife. Open May through October, it is over two hours' drive from Aomori, half a day in transit.