We went down for our included breakfast at the hotel early in the morning. Hotel breakfast in Japan in bonkers, nothing like the horrible continental breakfasts of the west. It was a buffet style breakfast with lots of options. I was still somewhat rattled by the events in the onsen the evening before, so I didn’t eat too much. I was afraid that the lady would come down to breakfast, so I was ready to check out and get to the next location. I did have some delicious miso soup and some veggies.

We checked out right after breakfast and took the train to Hirosaki using the OU line. We arrived in Hirosaki and stored our backpacks in a locker in the train station, paying 700 Yen for 24 hours. We then walked to the castle area in central Hirosaki. The walk took almost one hour. At Hirosaki castle we saw lots of Kamakura or snow lanterns (not lit up because it was daytime).

We thought we were going to miss the Hirosaki snow festival by a few days, so we were super excited to see all the snow sculptures. The castle grounds were huge and incredibly beautiful, covered in snow. There were many red bridges that stood out in contrast to the white snow, as well as many watchtowers along the hike to the castle.

We took too many photos and videos thinking this was pretty neat, little did we know that we had timed our stay PERFECTLY and would be seeing this all again lit up at night that very evening. 

We walked through a sort of food festival situation and then headed back towards Hirosaki station to get our bags before checking into the hotel. Along the way back to the station we stopped at a shopping mall to get a bit of lunch. We both ordered ramen from a booth and waited for a handheld device to beep, signalling our food was ready.

Jives got a crazy full garlic ramen with bean sprouts pilled three inches above the rim of the bowl. I got a black ramen with black garlic. Both were very good and incredibly filling. After out meal we went to Hirosaki station to grab our bags. We then walked for about 40 minutes with our backpacks to check into our accommodation “Dormmy Inn Hirosaki”. We went down a lovely pedestrian street for most of the walk. We had prepaid the stay, but had to pay a 300 Yen onsen tax to use the onsen (which is about $3 each).