Kankodai Observatory was added to Your Favorites!
Towada-Hachimantai NP, Aomori
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
The 2 peninsulas framing Kankodai are remnants of a younger crater rim inside Towada’s older caldera. Their gap, Naka-ko, is a 3-km crater formed by repeated eruptions; the latest was in 915 CE.
White sightseeing boats look tiny on Naka-ko, which reaches 326.8m below the surface. Kankodai faces this deepest basin of Lake Towada, Japan’s 3rd-deepest lake after Tazawa and Shikotsu.
Towada’s himemasu (kokanee) is an introduced local favorite. Chōshi Falls blocks fish at the lake’s only outlet; eggs from Hokkaido’s Lake Shikotsu arrived in 1902, and the fish returned to spawn in 1905.
Across Naka-ko, the Ogura Peninsula’s sheer wall is called Senjomaku (千丈幕). Writer Omachi Keigetsu proposed the name during a boat trip on Aug. 31, 1908, and his companions agreed.
In 2012, broad ice spread over Lake Towada for the first time in 24 years. It trapped sightseeing boats until a spring storm broke the ice; the local park association’s photo of the frozen lake was taken from Kankodai.
A prewar postcard already framed the view from old Kankodai: Aomori Prefecture’s archive lists it in “16 Views of Lake Towada,” with Senjomaku and Mt. Ohanabe in the title. The lookout was a souvenir scene before World War II.
