We were there in the wrong season, since the city's main claim to fame lies in over ten thousand cherry trees planted along two kilometres beside the Kitakami River in Tenshochi Park. You get another sense of pecking orders in the sakura department since the fortnight or so in late April when the trees are in full bloom might attract a rating as one of the Tōhoku Region's three best cherry blossom spots (Hirosaki Castle and Kakunodate are the others) it's only regarded as one of the hundred best places nationwide to view cherry blossoms.
Other attractions (mentioned on the off chance you might be passing by) include summer festivals including the Michinoku Traditional Dance Festival, featuring Oni Kenbai, a traditional sword dance where the dancers dress as demons, and Michinoku Folklore Village, an open air museum containing thirty preserved farmhouses and other buildings from around the Tōhoku Region restored and arranged around forested walkways, ponds and fields.
I'm guessing they're similar to what we saw in the Hida Folk Village in Takayama last time around, but they'd certainly be candidates on a less crowded itinerary, as would the Kitakami City Folklore Museum (included in the admission fee for the Folklore Village) with exhibits of Buddhist art, natural and cultural history of the area.
The Kitakami River, coincidentally, being one of the region's most significant geographical features is the fourth largest river in Japan, draining an area of 10,150 square kilometres in the rural areas of Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures and, interestingly, has no dams from its mouth to the Shijūshida Dam north of Morioka, which results in a spectacular salmon run every autumn. We'll be referring to the river again when we talk Hiraizumi in tomorrow's Travelogue.
Having alighted from the train we made our way through the station and into the car park, where a quick conference saw Madam and I back inside buying the tickets for the next day's leg after they'd conferred about what it was going to be. Our Host’s a teacher, and has plenty to do, so we figured we'd get on a train somewhere along the route we followed on our day's ramblings and then leave her to get on with the rest of her weekend.
Extracting the tickets from an official in the ticket office who seemed to resent people carrying Japan Rail Passes in general, or Japanese-speaking people carrying JR Passes in particular, Took a couple of minutes more than you might expect, but we emerged, tickets in hand, to head off for the evening's accommodation, a reacquaintance with a certain Grog Dog, and an introduction to his canine confrere who we've nicknamed Red Cordial Dog since he seems to have fallen into a vat of hyperactivity inducer.
We didn't hang about too long, however, and we're soon off after a quick discussion of the available options. We got a sorry, house full at the first, a similar response at a second, but a phone call and a brisk walk through the eating and drinking area near the station got us a booth at the third, a vaguely Italian-themed place whose trademark dish was Buffalo Chicken.
That turned out to be bony chicken pieces with a barbecue sauce, so I'm not sure where the Buffalo bit originated. Still, it was cheap, there was plenty of it, and the Chilean red wine with a title that seemed to translate as The Devil's Castle was quite quaffable, though I exercised a modicum of restraint, the bill, which I managed to catch a glimpse of on the way out, ran to around ¥7200, which seemed pretty cheap for a variety of plates of nibbles, a fair sized pizza, a drink each for the girls and around half a dozen glasses of red for Yours Truly.
Back at base camp there was coffee, conversation and a couple of performing dogs to fill in the time until one felt inclined to crash.