A Five-Hour Walking Tour in Kakunodate with an American Guest
mina5
On September 10, 2022, I guided a guest from the United States in Kakunodate. The guest had booked a five-hour walking tour of Kakunodate through the JGA website.
Due to the impact of COVID-19, foreign tourists had not been able to enter Japan freely until June 2022. At that time, only some foreign visitors were being accepted under limited conditions. The guest had visited Japan many times before. One of the reasons was his interest in Comiket. After attending Comiket, he planned to travel to various parts of Japan, and on this trip, he decided to visit the Tohoku region.
I went to meet the guest at 9:00 a.m. at Hotel B4T Kakunodate, located in front of Kakunodate Station. From there, we walked to the samurai residence district, spent five hours exploring the area, and then returned to the hotel.
During the tour, we visited places related to Naotake Odano, the Kawarada House, the Samurai Residence Museum, the Aoyagi House, and the Ishiguro House. We were able to see most of the samurai residences that are open to the public.
Around Kakunodate’s samurai residence district, you can see flags of Naotake Odano in many places. Naotake Odano lived from 1750 to 1780 and was a samurai of the Akita Domain. He was a Western-style painter and one of the leading figures of Akita Ranga, a school of Western-style painting in Akita.
He is very famous in Japan because he drew the illustrations for Kaitai Shinsho. Kaitai Shinsho was Japan’s first full-scale translation of a Western medical book, published in 1774. It appears in textbooks from elementary school through junior high and high school, so many Japanese people know about it from a young age.
At the Samurai Residence Museum, a video about the history of Kakunodate and its festivals was being shown. This helped the guest understand the background of the town and its traditional culture.
We also stopped at a souvenir shop in the samurai residence district and ate black sesame soft-serve ice cream. There are many different kinds of soft-serve ice cream there, so I recommend trying some when you visit.
