This weekend I headed down to Aomori City for Nate's birthday party. A good time was had by all, and Nate was an excellent host. Nate's booze collection is truly awe inspiring. The next morning everyone was pretty hung over (except for me strangely enough) so we grabbed some McDonald's and went down to the "beach". I didn't even know Aomori had a beach, but there actually is one as part of a small park crammed between a shipping port and some industrial buildings. After that, the gang headed off to Hakkoda for Jennifer Snowden's birthday bbq. I decided not to tag along as Jennifer and I don't really get along very well. In fact I suspect that she really hates my guts. (Some people say this is not true, so perhaps I'll confront her on this in the future and find out the truth). Instead I decided to go on another of my solo drives around the ken. This time I decided to drive up to the north-westernmost tip of Aomori, a small town called Tappi. I was thwarted a few weeks ago in my last attempt to drive up there by a road that was still closed for the winter. Tappi is a typical Aomori fishing town located at the base of large cliff, spotted with giant wind turbines. The scenery is really pretty and it is probably a fairly popular tourist destination in the summer despite its remote location. Its most famous attraction however is the Seikan Tunnel Museum.


The Seikan Tunnel (Seikan Tonneru) is the longest railway tunnel in the world, at 53.9 km (33.4 miles), even longer than Europe's famous Chunnel. Completed in 1988, it connects Aomori and Hokkaido as part of the JR Kaikyo Line. The volcanic rock beneath the Tsugaru Strait was too unstable for boring, so engineers had to blast most of the tunnel out with dynamite. The tunnel was conceived in the 1950's after over a thousand people were killed when a bunch of ferry boats sunk during a strong typhoon.


The double-track railway inside the tunnel is built with three rails, so that it can handle both narrow gauge and standard gauge trains. Currently, only slow narrow gauge trains use the tunnel. Supposedly there are long-term plans to link the tunnel into the Shinkansen network, although these are not expected to be completed until after 2020 (if ever). Unlike the busy Chunnel, this tunnel is hardly used at all with just a handful of short 'express' trains travelling each day between Aomori City and Hakkodate. Train tickets are really expensive in Japan, even for fairly short distances, so there really is little motive to take the train when you can fly, or take the ferry at just about the same cost or less.


There are two train stations inside the tunnel (Yoshioka-Kaitei Station and Tappi-Kaitei Station), both of which are museums detailing the history and function of the tunnel. The picture above is of the one in Tappi which was still closed for the winter on the day I visited. Aomori is spotted with old billboards detailing of all sorts of other ambitious projects that never were built or finished. I once saw a billboard picturing a giant bridge spanning the huge gap between Shimokita and Tsugaru. Good luck with finding the money for that, they're probably still trying to pay off the tab for the Seikan. With the way the population in Aomori is falling I think the Seikan Tunnel will be the last megaproject Aomori will see for a long time... other than ITER of course.