Oga Peninsula

This year for Golden Week, although it was slightly longer than usual because of the events surrounding the new emperor taking the throne, I didn't make any special plans, but just thought I'd drop by a few places nearby that I hadn't made it to yet. (Actually, I had wanted to climb the Dewa Sanzan, but apparently the peaks are still too snowy until summer.) The most interesting place with the most to do was the Oga Peninsula. I had a few destinations in mind: The only aquarium in Akita, Gao; the Namahage museum, about the Namahage monsters that originated in Oga; Mount Kampu, a smallish mountain; and the nearby Ogata Fuji, the lowest "mountain" in Japan. As I told the other teachers about my plans at our party after the sports festival, I learned about another destination: the Godzilla Rock on the rocky coast that apparently looks like a silhouette of Godzilla.

So on a day that looked like nice weather I set out at eight. It's actually relatively far away and spread out compared to what it looked like on the map, so I would be in for about six hours of driving and not getting home till about dark. After about two hours I arrived at the Godzilla Rock on the south coast of the peninsula. It was just a short, tiny turnoff from the main road that immediately sloped steeply down to a flattish rocky area that served as a parking lot. I was a little worried about what the rocks might do to the tires and undercarriage if I wasn't careful, but there were other cars there too, so I figured it would be okay if I dodged the largest and pointiest of them and didn't go too far.

The area was pretty much a lava flow that spilled out to sea with all kinds of jagged rock formations. There was a small lighthouse/maybe coast-guard-looking building on the small peninsula, and some signs tacked up pointing out the direction of the Godzilla Rock. Although the area was flattish, there was still some clambering over couple feet high protrusions and back down before coming to the Rock. Apparently at sunset you could get the sun to line up with the mouth and make it look like it was breathing fire.

The power lines go to the coast guard facility/lighthouse on the same cape.

The Godzilla Rock

From a slightly different angle.

It was interesting for a minute, but the area in general was fairly large and I took some time to wander out towards the edge where it met the sea and watch the waves crash up against the rocks and drain back off them into the ocean. It's like watching a campfire where you feel like you could sit there and watch it all day, although the videos aren't as interesting as it was in real life. There's a particularly big wave at the end of the third video.

The next stop was a set of five shrines that I only heard about just the day before. It was very close to the Godzilla Rock and the legend about them was that a group of ogres were terrorizing the nearby village, so to get rid of them the villagers made a bet that they couldn't build a set of one thousand stairs up to the shrine that night before the rooster crowed in the morning. The ogres took them up on it and had just placed the 999th step when one of the villagers imitated a rooster crowing. Thinking it was the real rooster, the ogres thought they had lost and immediately stopped their work and left.

I didn't count the number of stairs, but it was about a five minute walk up to the five shrines. There was nothing at the top really except the five shrines, so I only hung around a couple minutes before heading back down.

The view up the stairs...

...and down them.

Still going up.

"Hand-washing pond" in the area just below the shrines.

This stone tablet was set up next to the middle shrine and has the names of three mountains on it: Gassan, Yudono, and Chokai. The three holy Dewa Sanzan mountains are currently Gassan, Yudono, and Haguro, but one of the social studies teachers was telling me one day that our very own Mount Chokai used to be one of the three, but got replaced at some point (I don't remember the reason), and so here on this tablet is the proof.

The next stop was the aquarium on the west point of the peninsula. It's apparently the only aquarium in Akita, although there's actually one closer to my town over the border in Yamagata. I don't know how long it's been since I've been to an aquarium, so it was pretty interesting just because of that. It wasn't particularly large, but they tried to hit all the necessities like the anemones and clownfish, electric eel, jellyfish, sea turtles, sting rays, polar bears, seals, sea lion, and penguins. There was a section devoted to Akita's beloved hatahata fish, and an open pool set up where you were actually allowed to reach in and touch the starfish and sea urchins, so that was cool.

After that it was off to the Namahage Museum. It was somewhat off the main road in more of a backwoods location than I expected. There are two separate parts to it: the actual Namahage Museum, which is fairly small, and then a separate local folklore museum, which the main purpose of is that it puts on performances of the namahage visiting someone's house and what goes on during the visit.

About halfway through the museum one of the other ALTs who lives nearby rounded the corner with a troop of schoolkids behind him. They were on their school trip and came here to learn about local culture. I didn't know how much space was in the little house where the reenactment happens and at first thought it would be annoying to have all those kids in there being noisy during it, but it was actually a lot better with them there to all scream and be scared as the namahage stormed around the house stomping and slamming doors.

Examples of the various Namahage costumes over the years.

After that I headed off to Mount Kampu. It's not particularly high, nor particularly natural as there's a small tower with a revolving restaurant on the peak, but it still offers a nice view of the peninsula and the sea. There's also a small plaza right next to it with all the stores shuttered. I guess they were expecting more tourist activity when it was built but didn't get enough to sustain it or something.

The peninsula off to the west.

The mainland to the southeast.

The ridges left by the old volcanic craters.

The peak.

From there my last stop was Ogata Fuji. The Oga Peninsula used to be connected to the mainland only by two narrow legs straddling a large, shallow lake, Hachirogata, which was the second largest lake in Japan at the time. Because of its shallowness, in the '50s they built dikes and pumped out the water to reclaim the land for farming, making it now the lowest point in Japan at four meters below sea level.

Ogata Fuji is a small dirt hill built up so its peak is at 0m above sea level, and it's 3.776 meters tall. This is compared to the real Mount Fuji whose peak is at 3,776 meters above sea level, and hence the name Ogata Fuji. The road that it's on is lined with cherry trees and rape blossoms, both of which were in bloom, so it was a very picturesque area.

The lowest mountain in Japan.

After an arduous climb, I reached the summit.

The view from the peak.

Preparing for the descent. (The ball on top of that monument is at sea level.)

The cherry and rape blossoms were in bloom all along the road.

It was late in the day at this point and this was my last destination, so it was home from there. Actually, my calligraphy teacher had told me about a store in Akita City that I had never gotten around to visiting yet, so I stopped by there on the way home to pick up a few things and got home after dark.