April Adventures Across Japan Phase 2: Train Tracks to The North

The JR pass is a glorious things for visitors to Japan. Any time you ride on the JR line, albeit regular train or bullet train, you are covered. It is not available for residents of Japan... even temporary ones such as myself. So I picked up a smaller version of it, which would cover 5 days worth of rides on JR lines, but not the shinkansen, only regular trains. So, we slow train-ed it up north, and since we couldn't make it all the way up to Aomori in one day this way, we stopped in Sendai for the night.

Oot and aboot this little town in Northern Japan

The first thing I bought when I got to Tokyo (well, other than food, of course, but that's *long* gone) was a camera. Now that the weather is changing for the warmer and I can work on shaking this cabin fever, when the weather is favorable, I make an effort to explore the town I live in.

Welcome to Shichinohe Machi (七戸町）

View Shichinohe-machi, Aomori-ken, Japan in a larger map 七 = shichino= seventh 戸= he (pron 'hey') = door/gate 町= machi = town
For further explanation of the name, check out the history of Gonohe's name on Wikipedia. I presume they are all part of the same history and subsequent naming. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I can't find much information myself... There are two National Highways (国道= kokudou "country" +  "road", blue triangle signs) that go through town, the #4 and the #394. The #22 and #118 are Prefectural Roads (県道= kendou "prefecture" + "road", blue octagons . The streets have no other names and I'm still trying to figure out how folks find their way around without Google maps or other GPS capabilities. If you click on the different blocks on Google maps, it will highlight them for you and you can see that they are just arbitrarily shaped. Hopefully one day it will be explained to me, but until such a time, it's just weird. You have no idea how excited I was when I finally figured out where my home was and how to walk to the grocery store without getting horribly lost. I think the set up has to do with the fact that it's an old samurai town and if you don't live there, you're not supposed to be able to find your way around. As you can see from the map above, there is no set pattern, no grid, no main road that goes right through... it was very strange and disorienting for me when I first arrived. Whenever it's a nice, sunny day, I get the urge to explore...   Points of Interest:
Castle Ruins, Tenno Shrine(s), Temple(s), Art Gallery (featuring lots of lamps... apparently)

Amenities: Post office, grocery store, drug store, supermarket, shinkansen station, banks, gas stations, schools, hospital, public bath and a library. There's a 'shopping district', about a dozen hair salons (!? seriously, they're like... weeds!).
There should be a bunch of pegs and explanations of locations on the map, if there isn't, lemmie know and I'll fix it. :)

To the Book deposi-- I mean Mall!

Hey folks,

It's not for lack of trying that I haven't sent a package back to North American full of strange things, it's that I  haven't quite found the right things to ship back just yet. Now I get to see many strange things, but they're just not... the *right* strange things. I went down to the Shimoda Mall with David and Tim and here are some of the items we came across at Village Vanguard.

Hello Kitty Airfresheners.

Hirosaki pt 2

After checking out the castle, we hit up a book store (see the couple of book covers in the WTF post heheh chats...) then got some much needed food. We went to an Italian place and had some pizza. They were all pretty good, but I liked my calamari one the best.

Behold, the final slice.

Found the used CD shop... dun dun DUNNNN!

Put in my 7 hours of the BOE, working on my Japanese and updating things online, then I got a message from Tim asking if I wanted to join him at checking out the Electronics and GEM. I`ve now got a lime green case for my camera and a picture of some curiously named stores in the same parking lot as the electronics shop...

I don`t know what is sold @ Wonder Goo... or Hard-Off for that matter... but I like that they`re right next door to eachother... like the Dentist office and Laura Secord @ the Tuxedo shopping center back in Winnipeg.