We started the day with a hearty, massive Edo-period style Japanese breakfast. I could get used to this!

Our first stop of the day was the Statue of Tatsuko. Tatsuko is the subject of one of the area’s best-known folktales.

According to legend, Tatsuko was a young woman of unsurpassed beauty, who yearned to preserve her good looks and youth for eternity. Every night she prayed to the Okura Kannon, a deity of mercy and compassion. After many nights of prayer, the goddess told her that drinking water from a nearby spring would make her wish come true. Unfortunately for Tatsuko, her great thirst led her to drink until the spring ran dry, and she transformed into a dragon, fated to prowl the lake’s great depths for eternity as its guardian.

The gleaming statue celebrates this legend, and in a way grants Tatsuko’s wish for her youthful beauty to be preserved in perpetuity. It was created by celebrated sculptor and painter Funakoshi Yasutake (1912–2002), and first unveiled on May 12, 1968.

Source: https://www.city.semboku.akita.jp/en/sightseeing/spot/04_tatsukozou.html

After seeing the statue, we made our way to Dakigaeri Valley, a beautiful gorge with suspension bridges.

All that hiking and exploring made us hungry! Time foe an Akita prefecture specialty, the kiritanpo pot. This is basically a hot pot filled with vegetables and a special type of chicken only raised in Akita.

Next up, the Kamakura Museum. Kamakura are igloos made by the locals in Akita prefecture during an annual winter festival. After they are made, children welcome guests inside and provide them rice wine and snacks, and the guests will make offerings to the Gods to pray for water for the year’s crops.

Enough learning, time for fun with the Japanese past time of manga! Manga is Japanese comic books, but more expansive and covers many genres rather than just focusing on comedy. It really is a modern-day Japanese art form. At the Manga Museum, they preserve and showcase thousands of manga, and this day, they showcased a manga artist who drew about his travels to over 50 countries.

After a long day of travel, we settled in for the night at our ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel) in our yukatas.