Fish Market

Fish Market Tour & Base Airshow

The base organizes tours for the newcomers to base. They show you the base, a brief tour of Misawa, and then they take you to Hachinohe. The first day, you visit Misawa. They take you to one of the Budhist Temples. It is located on top of a hill (as many of the shrines and temples are in Japan - as a matter of fact, it seems every hill has a temple or shrine atop it) . The most interesting part of the temple is the cemetery out in front. Like most things in Japan, space is the deciding factor in form. So, they do not bury people in the ground - they don't have the room. Instead, they cremate everyone. Then, if you have some money, you get put into the family shrine in a cemetery.

The family shrines can be quite ornate, with carvings and writing. They can cost up to $100,000, and that is US dollars. They have compartments in them to hold the ashes of all the family members, along with places to put gifts and burn incense and the like.

Then, onto the temple itself. The temples are the buildings you would think of when you think of Japan. While a lot of other buildings look western, the temples and shrines always look Japanesey. The Buddhist Temple seemed to be one larger building. It had a few main rooms. The main entrance is of course where you take your shoes off and put on tiny slippers. Down a hall is the main shrine room. They have all sorts of worship rules and customs that take place when you visit an the main shrine. Thing like bowing an appropriate number of times and lighting some incense and ringing a bell. Too many to remember. There is a special order you do it all in to have good luck. I obviously never did it right.

Inside the main shrine room are several other smaller shrines dedicated to different things. One in particular was the childrens' shrine, where you put stuff and pray for healthy kids. Off the main shrine room is another room. It is the burial room. If you don't have enough money to have a burial shrine in the cemerery, you can get your ashes put in one of the small locker-style cubby hole shrines. It costs a fraction of the amount that getting a shrine does. (only $3,000)

After visiting the temple, we went to the samurai clan tourist village. It is a small park and house that is made to look like a samurai house from the old times. It is pretty cool, complete with wood plank flooring fit with holes in the center for actual fires for cooking and heating, tatami mat rooms, and again, TINY slippers for vistors with feet no larger than a size 7 shoe. They also had nice gardens surrounding the house. And of course, no Japanese attraction would be complete without cartoony cardboard cutout to pose in.

The next day, we went to Hachinohe. There, we started off visiting the fish market. Seafood is a HUGE part of the Japanese diet. Actually, they mostly just eat rice, ramen soup, and fish. Also, I don't know if it is because we are isolated in a remote area so things just grow larger there, but they have ginormous seafood. I will let you just explore the photos below, but needless to say, they eat lots of squid and octopus along with the fish.

The LARGEST oysters and shrimp I have ever seen. Also, the most octopus tentacles I have ever seen.

And of course, my personal favorite, the packaged fish eyeballs..

Apparently, many times when they know the Americans are coming to visit, they bring in a live octopus and dice him up to be sold. Unfortunately, they didn't have one our morning.

After visiting the fish market, we went to one of the Shinto Shrines. Shinto and Buddhist are the two main religions in Japan. They seem similar, but Shinto does not believe in Buddha. The shines and temples look alike as well. Except, wherever there is a Shinto shrine, they have a torii gate signifying the entrance. This is a torii gate

They can be big, small, simple, orbate, wood, concrete, or just whatever. Generally, the larger the torii gate, the larger or more significant the shrine. This gate is pretty big, as there are TONS of shrines that are about the size of a shed, each with it's own torii gate. If you look at the photos from hiking Iwaki mountain, the small, 10x10 shrine on TOP of the mountain has a torii gate with it even. But, there are gates larger than this one. (See gate in front of shrine in Ryusendo Cave page)

Anyway, the Japanese tour guides give a little demonstration in front of the shrine on the bowing and ringing the bell stuff you do at a Shinto shrine. The shinto shrines tend to have multiple buildings, but none very individually large. I don't know if they don't really have a gathering place for a service. They just come on their own and do their own thing, it seems like. Anyways, at the main shrine building, they have these little fortunes you can buy for 100Y. Since they bring all the Americans on the tour to this shrine, it is one of the only ones that offers fortunes in English. They also show you list of what the fortune can have. I didn't even have to get one. I know I was Dai Kyo. Once you get your fortune, if you have a bad one, you tie it to a tree in the area to leave it behind.

The next day was the Misawa Base airshow. Since we were living on base a few blocks from the runway, we headed over to check it out. Now, there are only 50,000 people in Misawa. But over 100,000 Japanese people show up at the airshow. And, for the past few years, they have not even been able to fly because the weather has been too bad. But, from what I hear, a lot of them come for the American pizza that they sell at the booths. There was a line 20 people long to get pizza. The airshow was ok. They had a B1 - first ever to be in the country of Japan. But, it didn't do any flybys - just on static display. They had some cool displays, my favorite being the Barret .50 caliber sniper rifle.

The most impressive thing I saw was the crowd. Not only were there just so many people that came to see the show, but I could not believe how many people had HUGE telephoto camera lenses and really nice camera set-ups. I have heard that in Japan, people really like gadgets, and when they get a hobby, they go all out. They will pretty much take up one hobby, and get all the latest and greatest gear. Here, the photographers were out in force. There were SO many regulars guys with huge lenses, multiple camera bodies, tripods and stepladders to see over the crowd - it was unreal. I had complete lens envy.

We share the air base with the US Navy as well as with the Japanese Self Defense Force (JSDF) It the amount of military they have been allowed for defense since WWII. They mostly fly the F-4, but seem to have a variant of the F-16 as well.

They also have a flying team much like the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels. They are called the Blue Impulse. I am sure they are great, but the best part is that they also have a precision motorcycle driving team that does formation driving. It is the coolest thing I have ever seen. They have bikes built to look just like their planes. They have wheels on the ends of their wings so they can bank like a plane would. And, in the area in front of their planes, they put on an "airshow", complete with their matching flight suits, precision march out to their bikes, salutes and all, and of course the standard airshow cheesy 1970s music. They even pop smoke a few times. Just classic Japan.

These are for Josh...I guess the whole three monkeys see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil originated in Japan, and they have monkeys in quite a few places here.