An early morning for everyone today as Eric and Trina's Shinkansen for Tokyo left Hachinohe at 9:05 am. We loaded the car and made it to the train station with 15 minutes to spare. Goodbyes are always hard - it was nice to spend three full days with the entire family though. They made it home safely (as I'm writing this two weeks later...) with a layover in New York City that was longer than anticipated. Once in Cleveland, they had to pick up their car at the hotel where they'd left it for park & fly, and then drive back to Grand Rapids. Made for a very long day for them.
Once we said goodbye, our next stop was a bathroom. Unfortunately, the only bathroom stall open in the women's room was a slit toilet. Porcelain but a large slit in the floor with places to put your feet on either side. It was a situation where I didn't feel I could wait to see if the other toilet was a western toilet, so went in the stall, took my pants completely off, and did what I needed to. The complete opposite of the fancy Japanese toilets! TMI I know but it was what it was.
After that, I wanted to get the geocache that was at the train station. We walked outside only for me to realize that it was outside the opposite entrance....so went back through the station, and after a short search I finally could say that I'd found a geocache in Japan! It was a round metal container that was magnetic on the bottom, about 4" wide and 2" deep. It was stuck to the bottom of a Japan postal box. After signing the log and leaving some trackables, we walked around the shopping area near the train station for a little while. We went into a store that had lots of different apple-themed gifts, mostly food related, as Aomori prefecture is known for their apples. I bought some apple candy to bring home as gifts. Steve was still looking for that elusive t-shirt, still no luck. Also looked in the general area for another manhole cover but didn't see any that weren't just general run-of-the-mill ones.
Hadn't really done a lot of research on what there was to do in Hachinohe, but Scott was somewhat familiar with the area, so we first went to the Hachinohe Fish Market. Steve was a little reluctant to go because he'd had a bad experience with rotting fish at a fish market in Boston once. We made a quick tour, and though there was a definite fishy smell, we didn't see any rotting fish. Some very unusual fish there, though we didn't buy anything.
Next stop was the Kushihiki Hachiman Shrine. This is the shrine that Scott visited when he first arrived in Misawa, while on the mandatory "get-acquainted" tour of the area. Another nice shrine set in a wooded area with cedar trees that are hundreds of years old. The shrine dates back to the year 1166 with the present location being built in 1222. I can't pretend that I understand very much about these shrines but they are beautiful to visit and we are respectful as we tour them.
After leaving the shrine, we next went to the Lapia Mall, still in Hachinohe. It was a typical Japanese mall, with department and food stores. Notable to me was a kimono store selling high end elaborate kimonos, new of course, for the equivalent of 500 USD plus. A big difference from my summer secondhand kimono at $15. I also enjoyed the equivalent of a dollar store, wanted to spend more time there but Scott and Steve wanted to move on.
We stopped at the Big Boy in Hachinohe as Steve wanted to eat at the Japanese equivalent of one of his favorite restaurants back home. Once there, we had to wait - Sunday mornings are the same at restaurants everywhere, I guess.... While waiting, we looked over the menu. Steve wasn't too happy with the menu choices, not understanding much of it of course, and we decided we would go ahead and head back to Misawa instead of eating there.
Went on base when we got back to Misawa, and had lunch at Burger King. Gotta love all this American fast food we are eating while in JAPAN...grr. Whatever. Went back to the commissary again to take another look at the tshirts without any more luck, then back to Scott's.
Steve stayed back with Marty, watching movies, while Scott took me out geocaching. It was a good fit as he played Pokemon Go while I was geocaching. Ran into a snag at first as the coordinates on my GPSr were in degrees, minutes, seconds, and the ones on his phone weren't. Couldn't figure out how to convert them, but thankfully I'd printed a geocaching map of Misawa so he could pretty much figure out the general area, and once we got in the general area my GPSr led me to Ground Zero (for the most part anyway.)
First stop for a cache ended up as a DNF - the parking area where we needed to be was closed for an event. We tried going down a nearby path and got close but there was 250 feet of impossible bushwhacking between where we were and the cache. Oh well. The 2nd and 3rd caches were at small parks in town, we found them both. This brought Scott to a couple of areas that he wasn't aware of. Next we were downtown, to a cache on a train that we didn't find. Next, we were searching for the Misawa Public Library, where a mystery cache that was missing was located. I had been given permission to replace it, and had brought a nano cache from home to do just that. This was the last weekend of the summer geocaching adventure, in which you were supposed to find a mystery cache. Well, this was the only mystery cache in the area and I'm glad I was given permission to replace it and therefore count it as a "find." Scott was a little disappointed that nobody was around as he wanted to practice saying "Where is the library?" in Japanese since he knew that phrase.
Next, we headed up to the Misawa Public Airport to find the cache that I had used as ground zero for my geocaching event that was to be held that evening. It was a small park across the street from the airport. Tree branches down all around (and this was before the typhoon), no lighting, and I realized that it would be dark by the time 6:30 rolled around. Great planning on my part. Not. But I didn't know the area well and thought a travel bug hotel would be a good place to also have an event. The cache description said there was a little pavilion which helped. We found the cache and Scott retrieved it for me since it was up in the rafters of the pavilion. Squeezed four travel bugs into it and then we went on to do a few more caches in the area. Really trying to drop off as many travel bugs as I can since I brought way too many of them. Just couldn't say no to my friends who wanted their bugs to travel..
Stopped at a Circle K convenience store for drinks and snacks. Scott bought some onigiri, which is a rice cake with meat filling, wrapped in seaweed. I stuck to a drink. Then we headed back to the airport, waited in the car for a bit, then headed to the event. The event was small but good. Two pairs of adults with their sons, both scouting families from Scott's troop, attended. One set were experienced cachers, the other set were newbies that had never been caching but were interested. There was also another cacher that came, also American military but not connected with the troop. They took some of the travel bugs but I still had quite a few left. I ended up taking about half of them back to the US with me after finding a few places in Tokyo later in the trip for others.
Home to Steve and Marty after the event. Marty apparently whined for Scott for quite a while. Pizza at Scott's then an early bedtime for all.
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