Hirosaki Part One: The Search For Yoshitomo Nara

This past weekend, I was in the mood for a bit of an adventure. When I agreed to buy a used couch in Goshogawara for thirty dollars, it seemed that I had my excuse. You see, Goshagawara is on the western side of the prefecture, known as the Tsugaru side. While I'm lucky enough to live in the Nambu area, the southeastern corner of the prefecture that is nestled between the mountains and the sea and thereby protected from heavy snowfalls , the Tsugaru side supposedly experiences massive snowfalls daily during the winter. Being an old midwestern boy, I just had to see it for myself. How much snow could there really be?

Well, as chance would have it, I was having a conversation with Yayoi-San last week about Yoshitomo Nara, the most prominent member of the 90s "superflat" pop-art movement and one of my favorite visual artists. Since coming to Japan, I had discovered that he was born in Hirosaki, on the Tsugaru side of Aomori but since he now lives and works in Tokyo, I assumed that there probably wouldn't be anything Yoshitomo-related to see there. Well, Yayoi-San mentioned that a previous ALT, June, was also a Yoshitomo fan and had traveled to Hirosaki to see an art installation of his. Yayoi-San described it as being inside of a garage or some sort of concrete building. A little research revealed that the building she was talking about was the Yoshii Brick Brew House, an old brewery building that Yoshitomo has purchased and is now using to premiere his new shows before shipping them off to museums around the world. In fact, his newest show A to Z, which aims to create a small village inside of the Brew House, is scheduled to open in July. From what I could tell, there was no current exhibition at the Brew House but I figured, there had to be something to see there, right?

So on Sunday morning at just after 8:30 AM, with a night of partying and only four hours of sleep under our belts, Matt and I left Maria's apartment in Hachinohe for the wilds of Tsugaru. The plan was as follows: roll into Hirosaki, find the Yoshii Brick Brew House (although we had no idea whatsoever as to where it was located), see the sights, then head down to Goshogawara to pick up my couch before heading home. To the right, you'll see a map of the actual trajectory we followed on the trip. At the last minute, we agreed to give this guy Dan a ride, as he lives in Hirosaki and we were passing through there anyhow. Despite Matt's and my penchant for blasting the deliciously cacophonous Polysics in the car, Dan slept in the back-seat for the duration of the journey.

According to the estimates that I had heard, it would take us about two to two and a half hours to reach Goshogowara. Unfortunately, due to snow and taking a wrong turn, it took us two hours just to get to Aomori City, which is just west of the halfway point. Although snow coated the ground in a fairly thick layer, driving up to this point was more than manageable. While they don't usually plow or salt the roads in Japan, my all-wheel-drive Impreza proved as sure-footed as a mountain goat.

Upon reaching Aomori, we decided to get on the Aomori bypass, which allows those passing through to avoid the city traffic. This turned out to be a (nearly) fatal miscalculation. The bypass is elevated above the city, where high winds caused the already massive amounts of snow on the ground to drift. Additionally, trucks would occasionally blaze past, kicking up clouds of snow in their wake. This snow hit my windshield and immediately turned to ice, which was especially inconvenient as my ice-covered windshield wipers were now essentially useless. As it was, I couldn't even see where the lanes were but the collusion of the aforementioned factors brought visibility down to about zero. There were actually a few times where I had to stop the car in the middle of the highway because I literally couldn't see anything-the car in front of me, the road-just pure white.

Well, somehow, we made it to Hirosaki in one piece, although it took us the better part of four hours. Just as we were rolling into the city proper, Dan awoke in the back seat, so I asked him if he knew how to get to the Brew House. He had no idea what I was talking about but he did call Angela, who has apparently been in Hirosaki for some time now and she was able to give us directions.

And so we arrived at the Yoshii Brick Brew House, a collection of large, interconnected, brick buildings. As we approached the closest building to the road, we saw that there was no obvious entrance, so I decided to circle the building in search of one.


After walking halfway around the perimeter, it became pretty clear that there had not been any activity in the vicinity of this building for some time. Once we reached the other side of the building, we saw that the front-side sat in an open field of knee-high snow. It was quite clear that there was nothing to see here. But I figured, we came this far, why not go all the way? Wearing only a sweater, blue jeans and tennis shoes, I jumped into the snowy field without hesitation and began trekking through it. I'm pretty sure that at this point, Matt and Dan looked at each other in bewilderment, asked each other "What the fuck is he doing?" and then defeatedly followed me into the white abyss. Below you'll see a photo of Matt, the words "What the fuck are we doing here?" undoubtedly forming on his lips.