Just a few more Hawai‘i-related posts before I’m all tapped out. This next one skews toward the bizarre.
Japanese tourism is huge on O‘ahu, as are businesses that are more than happy to reach into their yen-stuffed wallets. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a storefront or advertisement that was not written in both English and Japanese.
One thing that usually made us chuckle as we hiked down to the Waikīkī Beach area was the preponderance of automatic rifle gun clubs and placard-wearing solicitors handing out flyers for the gun clubs.
The gun club in the photo above was our favorite, mostly because of the “convincingly” Photoshopped blonde-haired, blue-eyed Asian on the sign near the entrance. (Plus it was a few doors down from a ramen bar that served the yummiest noodles I have ever slurped.)
One evening, for about ten minutes, I stopped to watch a few of the gun club solicitors. They consistently ignored every single non-Asian tourist who walked past them.
I just had to have a flyer as a souvenir. As soon as I approached one of them, the others swarmed. “You don’t want that one. We give you more rounds!” Alas, we all resisted the urge to “feel the power.”
I encountered a few similar shooting ranges in Las Vegas. The target audience there was tourists from Europe and the Northeastern US (i.e, socialist states with repressive gun laws). We went in an effort to “butch up” our bachelor party experience. I thought it was OK, although some of the guys were getting way too excited about it (the ones who never had shot a gun before).
A bachelor party in Vegas, eh? Sounds fun.
I imagine trying the more exotic firearms would be quite a kick—as long as some else is cleaning them. (We always hated going to the range in the army because cleaning the M-16s was such a pain.)
You know, it just hit me that I have never been to a bachelor party. Oh well. If you find a wife in Japan, Rob, we can all come over there to celebrate yours.
Of course they did the cleaning! Guns are expensive (especially title III submachine guns), and I am sure that for legal reasons they need to check all the weapons very carefully before renting them out.
Most of my friends got pistols, but I tried out a WWII German MP40. (I figured when else would I have the chance?)
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be back in Vegas anytime soon. If I find a Japanese bride the bachelor party will be in Bangkok! (Bring bail money!)