West Aomori · GoshogawaraNo.1074★★Open in map →

Tachineputa Hall

— Goshogawara's year-round home for its giant neputa floats

cultureOff the trail — and worth it

Goshogawara's August festival sends giant lantern floats through the streets for a few nights each summer. The rest of the year they stand in this hall, in an atrium built tall enough to keep them upright indoors.

FromHirosaki Station
~50 minJR Gono Line, then a short walk
Get off atGoshogawara Station (JR Gono Line)
On foot
Tachineputa Hall

Directions ↗

The sweet spot

This is a well-known regional museum, not a hidden one, and it is busiest around the festival. What it offers the rest of the year is the unusual part. Floats that otherwise appear on only a handful of August nights stand here on every open day, close enough to see how the paper is joined over the frame.

Where it is

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What to look for — in walking order

The display atriumthe full-height well seen from the ground floor, looking straight up at the floats
The top of the rampthe fourth-floor start of the route, level with the upper tiers of the figures
The spiral descenta circling walkway that shifts the viewing angle a little with every turn
The float workshopthe third-floor room where next year's float is being framed and papered
The ground-floor shop and cafelocal products and a cafe at the end of the route

How to actually get there

Hirosaki Station → Goshogawara Station (JR Gono Line, about 45 minutes, direct).
Goshogawara Station → Tachineputa Hall (walk about 5 minutes northwest along the main street).
Look up from the foot of the atrium first, then take the lift to the top of the route.
Walk the spiral ramp down beside the floats, and call at the workshop on the way out.

JR Gono Line from Hirosaki Station: Hirosaki Station →(JR Gono Line, about 45 minutes, no change)→ Goshogawara Station, then about 5 minutes on foot along the main street. Trains on this line are spaced widely through the day, so settle your return before you go inside.
Return from Goshogawara Station: Walk back to Goshogawara Station and take the JR Gono Line to Hirosaki. Services thin out in the evening and the last useful departure comes earlier than city travellers expect. Check the board when you arrive rather than after the visit.

Directions from my location (Google Maps) ↗

About the place

Tachineputa Hall stands on the main street of Goshogawara, a town on the Tsugaru plain in western Aomori. Its core is a single atrium running from the ground floor to the fourth, built tall enough to hold the floats the town parades in August. These are lantern figures of paper on wooden frames, standing about 23 metres high and weighing around 19 tonnes. Three of them are kept inside at any one time: the newest, and the two built in the years before it. One wall of the atrium is movable, so the floats can be rolled straight out into the street when the festival opens.

How to enjoy it

Opening hours change with the season and shorten in winter, so check the day's times before setting out. Coming outside the August festival week is the point of the place, because the floats are then indoors and lit and you can take the ramp at your own pace instead of watching them pass. Allow enough time to look up from the bottom first, ride to the top, and walk the whole way down.

Background & history

Goshogawara prospered as a collecting point for the rice and timber of the Tsugaru plain, and by the late Meiji years its merchants and landowners competed by building ever taller neputa. Overhead electric and telephone lines ended that contest, as the floats had to shrink to pass beneath them until the tall form died out. Old drawings resurfaced in the 1990s, and volunteers rebuilt a full-height float in 1996, about eighty years after the last one. The hall opened in 2004, and the festival now runs from 4 to 8 August.

Before you go

Cash: The exhibition floor charges admission, and the rate is revised from time to time, so confirm the current price on the official site before you go. Accepted payment methods differ from counter to counter, so keep some cash on you.
Good to know: Opening hours are shorter through the winter months, and the hall closes on some days for maintenance. Longer closures have happened too, so confirm that it is open on your date before making the trip. During the festival week in early August the floats are out on the street, not in the atrium.
Another way: Tsugaru Railway's Tsugaru-Goshogawara Station sits beside the JR station, so the hall can be combined with a ride on that line. By car, it is a short drive from the Goshogawara-Kita interchange on the Tsugaru Expressway.
After you get off: From Goshogawara Station, walk northwest along the main street for about 5 minutes. The hall is the tall brick-and-glass building on the left, with a rounded glass front facing the street.