Hachinohe, Ho!

Late Saturday morning I set out on my bike for Shimoda station, bound for the bright lights of Hachinohe. Okay, admittedly Hach is laid out more like a highly populated suburb but next to Momoishi, anything looks like a big city. On the way to the station exists something so out of place that only the modern technology of photography could accurately represent it.


That's right, an authentic Mini specialist (not the fake BMW kind we have in the states) out in the middle of nowhere Shimoda. Why?

At any rate, I eventually made my way into Hachinohe where I met up with Matt. We then proceeded to wander around the city rather aimlessly for the rest of the day. Here are some highlights.

Japan may be famous for its dearth of real firearms but they manage to fill the void quite nicely with shockingly realistic bb gun replicas. Despite the poor quality of the photograph, you should be able to see that most of these things have no markings on them to identify them as toys. I'm pretty sure you could rob a bank with one of these, if you saw fit.

Neither Matt nor myself had eaten a Japanese donut yet, having been thoroughly scared off by reports about how strange and disappointing they were. Despite these warnings, we just couldn't resist. If you've ever walked past a Mister Donut, you would know that the donuts there just look so good that there's no way they could be bad. Plus, they have the funniest advertisement that I have ever seen, which Matt and I discussed at length while sampling the product (perhaps you would like to watch it in Real Player, or maybe you would prefer the Windows Media format instead). So, what about the donuts? Again, the miracle of modern technology comes to our aid. The following time lapse sequence documents Matt's reaction, from the first bite to the point of reflection. Notice the full range of emotions through which he is moved by the donut.

Yeah, the donuts were good. The only thing that was strange about them was that they were both sweet and salty. The powdered sugar that they put on top of the donuts had a little bit of salt mixed in. Strange but still delicious.

The new thing for Japanese soda machines is that you can buy a soda using your cellphone, no change required. This machine has that feature. As you can see, it also has a video monitor on which a short movie plays of a chimpanzee in a striped sweater who attempts to buy a Coca-Cola. Despite his human-like sense of style, he is not successful in his endeavors.

The last places we went before heading into Nambu were the Toys R Us and the Yamada Denki. I saw this device at Toys R Us, it's apparently a DVDRW deck that also plays Playstation 2 games and also has either a 250 GB or 160 GB drive in it (which I'm assuming means it has some sort of Tivo-like functionality). I did not know that such a thing existed.

I knew that I wanted to buy a Region 2 DVD player and I also knew that I might want a Nintendo. So I ended up buying this lil' guy, the Panasonic Q. It plays both Gamecube games and DVDs and looks all shiny and pretty-like. I decided to fall for the nostalgia trap and bought Starfox to go along with it. I haven't really played it much yet although my initial impression leads me to believe that I will be able to relive my glory days of Super FX microchip powered dogfights in a satisfactory manner.