Ohanabeyama Observatory was added to Your Favorites!
Towada-Hachimantai NP, Aomori
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Towada is a caldera within a caldera: its deepest central basin drops 327 m. In the lake, only the summit of Mikado-ishi, a volcano formed about 4,000 years ago, rises above the water.
For 137 years, the boundary across Lake Towada was unsettled. In 2008, Ohanabe’s summit survey point became the northern anchor of the land boundary; the lake was divided 60:40 between Towada and Kosaka.
A road was cut across South Hakkoda toward Ohanabe as relief work during the crop failures of the 1930s. Flood damage and wartime disruption left it largely abandoned; only sections survive today as trail.
In 1908, writer Omachi Keigetsu helped introduce Lake Towada to readers nationwide—then climbed Ohanabe in rain and fog and saw no lake at all. He still wrote that choosing this mountain for the view was right.
Before its current form, Ohanabe’s lookout had a Kōnan Bus stop and a simple shelter. In 1965, it was rebuilt ahead of a National Park Congress and the visit of Prince and Princess Hitachi.
