Aomori

This prefecture grows the great majority of the country's apples, and the scale of that is only clear once you are in it. Around the foothills the planting runs continuously for kilometres, low trees in ranks with the mountain behind them, and in the harvest months the fruit is stacked in crates at the ends of the rows and sold from sheds at the roadside.

For a visitor that turns a drive into the attraction rather than the connection between attractions. There are varieties here that are grown in quantities too small to ship, orchards that let you pick by the hour in autumn, and a cider industry that has grown up around the western town in the last couple of decades. If you are here between the harvest and the spring, buy fruit at a roadside stand rather than a station kiosk at least once — the difference is not subtle, and it costs very little.

Three days covers one half of the prefecture properly. Four covers both halves badly, and that is the trap: Hirosaki to Hachinohe is a long way round whichever route you take, because the mountains and Mutsu Bay sit between them and the rail line goes around rather than through.

The realistic routes are therefore one-sided. West: Shin-Aomori, Hirosaki, the Shirakami foothills and the Tsugaru coast, three days, with a car for the last two. East: Hachinohe, the Nanbu coast and Lake Towada, three days, again with a car once you leave the city. The one crossing worth making is Aomori City to Lake Towada and the Oirase gorge, about two hours by seasonal bus, which puts the gorge within reach of a western itinerary in autumn.

Two days is enough for Aomori City and Hirosaki alone — half an hour apart by limited express — and that is a perfectly good short trip. Adding the Shimokita peninsula to anything under five days does not work; it is a long peninsula with one road up it.

The Tohoku Shinkansen ends at Shin-Aomori, about three hours from Tokyo, with Hachinohe on the way; from Shin-Aomori it is a short local hop to Aomori Station and roughly 30 minutes by limited express to Hirosaki. Aomori Airport is about an hour and a quarter from Haneda. Buses from Aomori Station reach Hakkoda and, in season, Lake Towada and the Oirase gorge — but the Towada service runs to a seasonal timetable and stops in winter. Shirakami-Sanchi and the Tsugaru coast need a car. Note also that the two halves of the prefecture connect badly to each other: Hirosaki to Hachinohe is a long way round however you go.

The two sites here with the strongest claim on a traveller's time are both remarkable for an absence rather than an achievement. One is a large stand of virgin beech forest in the western mountains, among the last of its kind in this part of the world, which exists because the terrain made logging uneconomic rather than because anyone set out to save it. The other is a settlement on the edge of the city that was occupied for well over a thousand years before rice farming reached this far north, and was found under a planned building site.

Both reward slow visits and neither photographs well, which is precisely why they are quiet. Read something about each before you arrive — the forest in particular looks like ordinary woodland until you understand what makes it unusual — and give the archaeological site a guided round rather than walking it alone.

Trains get you between the four places most people have heard of and nowhere else. Shin-Aomori to Hirosaki is quick, Hachinohe is on the shinkansen, and after that the network thins to branch lines running a few times a day. Shirakami-Sanchi, the Tsugaru coast and the whole Shimokita peninsula are car country in practice.

The bus to Lake Towada and Oirase is the exception worth knowing: it runs from Aomori City on a seasonal timetable, works well in autumn, and stops altogether in winter. Which is the other thing — winter here is not a mild inconvenience. Aomori City is among the snowiest cities on earth for its size, coastal roads close in storms, and a hire car in January needs to be driven accordingly.

The first week of August unless you are coming for the festivals. Nebuta in Aomori City and Neputa in Hirosaki run simultaneously, accommodation across the prefecture is booked months ahead and priced for it, and the cities are given over to the crowds. If the festivals are the reason you are coming, book in spring; if they are not, come in the second half of the month.

March and early April are the other weak window. The snow is dirty and going, the Hakkoda ropeway season is ending, the Towada road has not reopened, and the cherry blossom at Hirosaki — which is genuinely worth planning around — does not arrive until the very end of April. Arriving in late March expecting blossom is a common and avoidable miss.

August is when the prefecture is loudest and fullest: Nebuta in Aomori City and Neputa in Hirosaki both run in the first week, and rooms sell out months ahead. Summers are otherwise mild, with highs near 25°C. Apple harvest runs from September into November, and the Oirase gorge colours in mid-October. Winter is the serious season — Hakkoda's snowpack is among the deepest measured anywhere, the ropeway runs for skiers from December, and coastal roads close in storms. Hirosaki Castle's cherry blossoms arrive late by national standards, at the end of April into the first days of May.

Ōma, at the tip of the Shimokita peninsula, lands the bluefin tuna that sets auction records in Tokyo, and eating it at the source is the cheaper option. Mutsu Bay scallops are at their best in winter. Apples run from the September harvest through the year in every form the prefecture can devise, including cider around Hirosaki. Senbei-jiru, a hotpot with wheat crackers boiled into it until they go soft at the edges, is a Nanbu dish, and the Hachinohe Sunday morning markets are the easiest place to find it.

First time, go west and go in late April or October. Hirosaki gives you a castle, an orchard landscape and a walkable city, the Hakkoda mountains are half an hour behind Aomori City, and the two are close enough to run from one base. That is a compact three days that never feels like a driving holiday.

A second visit should take the Shimokita peninsula, which almost nobody does, or come in deep winter for Hakkoda. Shimokita is a full commitment — a long drive up an emptying peninsula to Osorezan, a volcanic site with a genuinely strange atmosphere, and the tuna port at the tip — and it is the part of Aomori that stays with people. Winter is the other answer: the snow depth on Hakkoda is a thing to experience rather than read about, and the prefecture is at its most itself under it.