(This is Part three of a ramble through my photo album - pictures that I took with a cheap little Kodak during my first military assignment overseas. This was thirty years ago, and just about everything about the Air Force, and Misawa AB has changed since then...Part One is here, Part Two is here.)

 (At Morioka Castle, summer of 1977)

One of the first things the Air Force inflicted upon new personnel arriving overseas was a one or two-day long local orientation session: learning about host nation customs and peculiarities. I met the guy on the right during that session: his name was Freddy R., a junior NCO who worked in the base finance office. He had been to Japan on a previous assignment, loved the place enormously, and had traveled all over, independently. He and one of his friends and I went off on a road trip, to Morioka, Lake Towada and Mutsu bay almost at once. We became fairly good friends; he had a girlfriend back in the States and I had a boyfriend. (Eventually both of our significant-other relationships went disasterously sour, and I had to ignore a lot of blatent hints from Freddy that we should become a couple. I liked him as a friend - life is not like a movie.)

Bridge over moat, at Morioka Castle

Downtown traffic, in Morioka - note bicyclist nonchalantly going the wrong way on a one-way street. And by the way - they drive on the left-hand side of the road in Japan, just like they do in England. The steering wheel is on the right, in Japanese cars. This made it fun, coming home on leave, and driving on the right, in a left-steering wheel car. For days, I would reach for something like the shift or the turn indicator  ... and actually grasp something else. And Japanese cars were really dinky. I had a tiny Honda station wagon, and I could sit in the drivers' seat, reach out with my left hand, and brush my knuckles against the passenger door. Not my fingertips. Knuckles. And I am 5-.5.

Along the shore, Mutsu Bay. Freddy took us to some nice places, on that road-trip: there was a whole little row of food-booths along a certain point at Mutsu Bay, which served grilled sea-food - like scallops, fresh and grilled on the scallop shell, pulled live from little tanks of salt-water. Perfection - I came home, and bought supermarket frozen scallops, and threw them away because they tasted like muck. I'll never forget, though -- the Japanese customer at one of the little booths, who took a live little fish from the tank, and peeled it ... like you would peel an orange. And it was still flapping. I love fresh seafood, but seeing it wiggling was a bit of a gross-0ut.

Morioka City, from the top of the hill. A city -- but different in so many ways.

Very obviously - not the Pacific Coast Highway. Or at least - not our pacific coast highway. A roadside gas and grocery, alongside the road around Mutsu Bay. Like ... and yet, not like. Smaller, just as flimsy construction, same flashy signage. But the dispensing machines? OMG, you can get practically anything from a Japanese dispensing machine.

Just where the road to Lake Towada climbed over a particular range of hills, there was a small scenic overlook, where one could stop and take a picture. I loved this particular view, and stopped many times. This part of Japan was more or less the Appalachia of Japan - rural, scenic, comparitively un-prosperous and empty. The last time I drove this way, though - all of this had been ripped out, and there were a series of ugly tin-sided warehouses down below.

Ripe something-or-other, possibly wheat, near Lake Towada. What, do I look like a farmer? It was my Granny Jessie's talent, to know what was growing in fields. She came to visit me, while I was at Misawa - she and my sister Pip. They stayed in my room in the dorm - to the shock of some, discovering a little old Pasadena granny in temporary residence - and the delight of certain male personnel, who thought Pip was a new assignee.

More rural and scenic Japan. We loved going up to Lake Towada, at most every season, except in winter -- although I did make one dangerous excursion in very early spring, when the snow up there was still ten feet thick. Anyone who had a car and wanted to get away for a bit -- Lake Towada was the favored destination, although the fifteen or so miles of road which paralleled the Oirase River through every twist and turn - that was not a drive for the faint of heart. Not with kamakazi logging trucks coming at you from the other direction with two wheels well-over the center line on a blind curve.

Fall foliage, from the lake - one from the vantage-point of one of those little paddle-boats. Take this, New England!

Possibly taken from the window of a moving car ... and if it was along the Oirase River, moving was about the only thing to be doing. Otherwise one would be run over by a logging truck, or herds of stampeding photographers. Lovely drive - but hardly anywhere to park safely between the bottom and the top.

One of the sights of Lake Towada - the twin statues, standing in a little glade, just off the shore. I can't remember the story, if I ever knew it at all - something about a local legend, of a woman looking at her own reflection in the lake.

(Next - Winter at Misawa - 96 inches of snow.)