Situated at the top of the Japanese home island, Honshu, prefecture Aomori has a dialect most other Japanese cannot understand.

Though not the capital, the city of Hirosaki boasts the Nebuta Matsuri, or Lantern Festival, in which giant lanterns made of wood and paper are paraded through the streets.

My travels there contrast: one of the Cherry Blossom festival during the spring of Golden Week, and one a trip to Osorezan, the haunted landscape on the eastern peninsula where blind women for centuries have talked to the dead.