Summer in Greater Tokyo has damn near set me on fire since 2020 — and this is coming from a woman who lived in the tropics for the first 22 years of her life. I didn’t think I could stand a third straight year of hot humidity, so I decided to get away from it all for a few days (seriously, I just needed at least one day) and head to Tohoku, a region which extends from Aomori in the north to Fukushima in the south — yes, that Fukushima. Even if my destinations of Aomori and Ichinoseki weren’t cool paradises, and most of the four days I spent up north were cloudy, if not rainy, the August temperatures there were a far cry from the inferno that is my home prefecture of Kanagawa.
I was a little apprehensive about boarding the Tohoku Shinkansen that would take me from Tokyo to Aomori (a middle seat, thanks to my last-minute bookings), because there’s a Notice or Delay announcement about it on the local commuter trains every three days. Northern Tohoku in particular was experiencing some bad weather during the summer break, so there was a part of me that wasn’t sure if my planned holiday was even going to get off the ground.
Fortunately, the first leg of the trip went relatively smoothly, aside from local train cancellations that let to a last-minute bus interchange, and it wasn’t long before I was at my first destination of Aomori city: the Sannai Maruyama Historical Site.
Sannai Maruyama is not only home to a museum of Jomon pottery and artifacts from over 5000 years ago, but also to an entire excavation site unearthing the foundations and remains of a Jomon-era village. The most famous marker of this excavation is the reconstruction of a mysterious six-pillared wooden structure whose foundations can be seen at the site even today. The foundation holes run deep, and still contain remains of the wooden pillars of the original building. Other reconstructions include pit dwellings (huts in which villagers lived), storehouses, and a longhouse that stayed surprisingly dry despite the pouring rain outside (my stroll through the site left me very wet and my sneakers annoyingly squishy — a situation I could’ve avoided had I seen the sign for rain boots at the entrance).
When I went inside to go gaga over the Jomon Jiyukan museum, I learned that the excavated village has one more unique feature — adult graves lining either side of the main road. Infants were buried in pots and laid to rest elsewhere, but adults remained near the village, possibly for the living to reflect and remember their ancestors while going about their daily lives. I wonder how we’d feel if we had similar urban design today.
As I was saying, I fell in love with the Jomon Jiyukan for its detailed collection, and the wealth of information available even in English near each section. Everything was organized and presented incredibly neatly and concisely, separated into sections such as pottery, daily life, hunting, gathering, and fishing. Jomon Japan is most famous for its pottery, so I won’t go into too much detail, aside from the amazingly detailed explanations about how excavated pottery was restored and made fit for display. The museum explains the process step-by-step, and tells the viewer what to look for in the display to understand the results of the restoration process.
But the other areas of the museum absolutely blew my mind, starting with the cross-section of excavated earth. The images showed the various steps of cutting out that section, what equipment is required, and how long it takes to get everything ready. I was nearly overwhelmed at the thought of so many layers of history being under our feet at any given point in time, especially since this site was originally earmarked for a baseball stadium before the artifacts were unearthed. It’s so strange to think of entire settlements from thousands of years ago possibly being beneath ordinary buildings like supermarkets and office buildings. I wonder if there’s anything under the building I live in now!
Of course, my misconception about ancient societies being isolated was corrected years ago, but it was still surprising to learn about gems and stones being brought into what is now Aomori from other Jomon settlements and regions. The museum displays a map highlighting which areas of modern Tohoku were home to prominent Jomon settlements, and what metals and gems were exported from and imported to the Sannai Maruyama settlement in particular. With the Indus Valley Civilization of 4000 years ago having links with far-off civilizations such as Mesopotamia, it makes sense that even smaller rural settlements would know of other communities nearby and have regular interactions with them. It’s still cool to be reminded of that fact, though.
And then, there was the section on food consumption. The excavations at Sannai Maruyama have unearthed the bones of a variety of fish and animals, allowing historians to make inferences about what Jomon villagers in the area consumed regularly, and what species of fauna were available at the time compared to the contemporary era. The hunting part also revealed the types of weapons people used to capture and kill animals, from arrows to harpoons.
When looking at the arrowheads carefully displayed behind glass, I noticed the similarity of the shapes found here and the ones I’ve seen in other museums and excavation sites. My history class in college was fortunate enough to visit the Sanauli burial site in Uttar Pradesh, which features burial mounds dating to the second millennium BCE (a time period not long after the Sannai Maruyama settlement’s heyday); arrowheads and spearheads I saw there as well as contemporary spearheads of other regions displayed in the National Museums of Delhi and Tokyo could just as easily be found in the glass cases of Jomon Jiyukan. Despite being thousands of kilometers apart, people have always been strikingly similar; they have the same methods of creating items for daily life, recreation, and defense; they have had hopes and dreams and ideas and instances of sitting together at the end of the day.
Speaking of ending the day, I had dinner at an izakaya in Shinmachi, a shopping street just a short walk from my hotel and right in front of Aomori station, but since most of the shops were closed due to the summer break, I won’t say much about it aside from the fact that I must be the only adult who ate at this izakaya while ordering orange juice instead of alcohol. Instead, let me tell you about what happened as I was leaving Sannai Maruyama.
I intended to board a cute little red shuttle bus to Shin-Aomori to collect my suitcase, and take another bus to my hotel from there. While I was waiting at the museum bus stop with a handful of others, the largest bumblebee I’ve ever seen decided that our bus station was going to be its new hangout spot. It buzzed around the sign, and we slowly backed away…only to move elsewhere yet again when the bee wanted to investigate who we were. The three of us at the stop when the shuttle bus finally arrived were so relieved to see said bus…until, of course, the bumblebee tried entering with us.
Now, this is obviously not something any of us wanted, so the driver was sensible enough to close the bus doors as soon as we boarded, opening them only when another passenger wanted to board. Every time someone tried getting on, the bee tried following them as well, and those of us already inside would practically shout at the new boarders to hurry up and get in because “there’s a bumblebee outside!!”
We had several close shaves, and even one false alarm where we thought we saw the bee inside the bus. It was honestly a relief when it was time for the bus to depart, and I’d had quite enough excitement for one day. I decided to wind down by having a relaxed dinner and trying out the hotel baths — a totally new experience on its own. Both went a long way in helping me relax after the long journey from Kawasaki to Aomori and the exciting afternoon in the museum — and around the shuttle bus.
Next time, I’ll share my experience of the museums around Aomori station, and the long walk I took (in vain) in an attempt to reach a particular lighthouse and return to my hotel in time to board my train(s) to Ichinoseki. For now, I just hope I have another chance to visit Aomori. I’d like to take a second look at the Sannai Maruyama site — and next time, if it’s very wet, I’ll remember to borrow the museum’s rain boots.
