Tokyo to Aomori?

Am going to be going to Aomori in a few weeks from Tokyo. I was looking at Shinkansen though, and it's $$! Is there anyway to get there (in a reasonable amount of time) by bus/some combination of trains, or on a rail pass of some sort? Thanks!

The regular one way fare on an overnight bus is 10,000 yen. But these days, there are many discount offers on buses. I can find a lot of websites advertising one way fares of around 4500 yen. However, these are all in Japanese.

japanese is fine. i just couldn't figure out where to look.

Enter 青森　東京　バス into Google and you will get lots of discount bus services:
http://www.google.com/

There are often great offers for trips from Tokyo to northern Tohoku (including Aomori) from JR: you have to buy a pack including the train journey (shinkansen) and a hotel night, but often, such package is cheaper than the train alone. Plus, you don't even need to stay at the hotel you selected, and can delay your return. For example, even by taking a 1-night package, you are allowed to reserve the return journey for any day you wish. The problem with such package is that you can NOT change the dates and trains once you bought it...
There are some price examples here : http://www.secret-japan.com/forum/shinkansen-comment-pa... (in French, but you can see that you could get a return ticket to Aomori for 25000 yen)...

123bus offers a tokyo to aomori trip for around 5,000yen.

i think they may have changed their name to the willer bus group now, but it's the same company basically.

it's not really comfortable but it's cheap. book a few days in advance and you might get a few hundred yen discount.