Akita秋田県

Places to seeWhere to go in Akita

Start with the first of these. Each is worth half a day.

Kakunodate角館

Weeping cherry trees over the black wooden walls of a samurai street. Usually late April.

Half a daySpring only

MAP

Lake Tazawa田沢湖

The deepest lake in Japan at 423 metres, and it does not freeze. Blue even in poor weather.

Half a day

MAP

Nyuto Onsen乳頭温泉郷

Old mountain hot-spring inns, one with a milky white bath in a wooden hut three hundred years old.

Stay a nightYou can get in

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Oga Peninsula男鹿半島

A rugged coast peninsula, and the home of the masked Namahage figures of New Year.

Half a day

MAP

What Akita is

It gets some of the heaviest snow in the world for a place people actually live in.

Kakunodate is the reason to come in spring. A street of samurai houses with black wooden walls has weeping cherry trees hanging over it — not the usual upright kind, but long trailing branches falling almost to the ground. The dark walls behind the pale pink are why this one is different from every other blossom site in Japan. Usually late April.

When to comeThe same place, four different places

Pick the season first and the days will arrange themselves.

March – May

Deep snow into April. Kakunodate’s weeping cherries in late April are the peak of the year here.

June – August

Cool and green. The Kanto lantern festival is in the first week of August.

September – November

Autumn colour from early October in the mountains, and rice harvest on the plain.

December – February

Among the heaviest snowfall in the world for an inhabited place. Hot springs, and trains that still run.

Find it fastEverything in Akita