Plenty of Nothing

Hachinohe Shuzo

Lovely Taisho architecture at the Hachinohe Shuzo Sake Brewery. Source.

Shichinohe Horse Power

Shichinohe is still horse country. This horse pull competition took place in 2017. Source.

Rokunohe Votes

Electronic voting machines were introduced on a trial basis in Japan in 2002. They reduced the time needed to count votes, but they were expensive to rent and never caught on enough to make it worthwhile for the manufacturer to continue tech support of them. Rokunohe, Aomori, the last municipality to use the machines, went back to paper ballots in April 2018. Source.

Hibarino Park Soccer Field, Gonohe

Hibarino Park Soccer Field is the home park of Gonohe SC (written 五戸町SC on the soccer ball). That very determined soccer coach is standing in front of the corner marked by the teacup on the map. Sources: Google Maps and Aomori Goal Twitter account.

Midsummer in Sweden Hills

It's Midsummer in Sweden, and also in Sweden Hills, Hokkaido. Read.

Vintage Nintendo Hanafuda Cards

Source.

Yawata Uma

In the feudal era the Nanbu clans had control of eastern Aomori Prefecture and most of Iwate Prefecture. The Nanbu were breeders of warhorses, and they constructed a series of fortified ranches where they could raise and protect their valuable animals. These fortified places are known collectively as the Nine Numbered Stockades, and each one was named sequentially according to the formula "number + nohe". Each "nohe" except for the fourth one has given its name to a modern town or city.

Why is there no Shinohe today? At first you might think there never was a Shinohe because Japanese culture is somewhat shy of the number four, which sounds the same as the word for death. But plenty of people have Shinohe as a family name, so that can't be it.

Within the boundaries of Hachinohe, which has grown into a large city, there's an outlying district called Yawata which has a shrine named Kushihiki Hachiman-gu. The shrine is associated with a local folk-art tradition: carved wooden horses called Yawata Uma. These wooden horses suggest that the area around Yawata might have been the missing Numbered Stockade Number Four. Source. Source.

Shinjuku c. 1940

"Shinjuku Nakamauarya" (c. 1940) by Kyoshi Hori. Source.

Eleven Cats

The most famous citizen of Sannohe, Aomori, is Noboru Baba, who drew a series of books about the Eleven Cats. His art is all over the Sannohe town website.  Source.

IGR 7000

Sure, you could take the bullet train from Tokyo to Aomori and be there before you left, or you could get off at Ninohe and board this little sweetheart, an IGR 7000 in Iwate Galaxy Railway blue and yellow colours, which makes a stop every three or four kilometres. Source.