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May 03, 2008 Kujukuri (JAPAN) Visiting Kumagai-san's Beach House Along Japan's Kujukuri Coast
The difference between metro-Tokyo and "rural" Japan was made apparent by both the variety of food on the shelves and the look of the people. Gone were the stressed out appearances of Tokyo residents who are shopping for groceries on their way home from work. Instead, there were people running into their friends and stopping to chat. Also, (get this!), there were kids running around, which is something one never sees in Tokyo.
I would have liked to buy the nihonshu to stay warm, but Japanese beer is too damn good to pass up. I am not sure if it is available in the United States, but Asahi Dry and Yebisu Premium are worth checking out. Also, while I am on the subject of nihonshu, I want to make clear that nobody in Japan knows what a sake bomb is. It is (presumably) an American invention, despite numerous "experts" trying to convince me otherwise.
There was a one-hour interim period where we all set about cleaning the house and turning on the water (it is pumped from a well), but afterward we headed down to the beach to go for a walk. The weather was not the greatest - there were small flurries of rain all day and the wind augmented the cold - but there was still a good atmosphere along the waterfront.
Anyway, I asked several of the surfers
along the beach (who were shivering from the cold,
despite their dry suits), and all of them said there
were no sharks around - although they have seen several
skates (which have a poisonous spike on their tail).
One of the surfers claimed that sharks don't frequent this part of the coast because the chilly water current comes down from the North, and the sharks prefer the warmer waters south of Tokyo. I knew this to be a load of bollocks because the workers who renovated the beach house caught several baby sharks while fishing along the coast. Plus, one of the largest underwater shelves is located just off Japan's eastern coast, and God only knows what kind of massive creatures come out of there. (For any who think I am over-exaggerating, which I surely am, simply look up the giant squid that was caught off the coast of Japan.)
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This
morning Kumagai-san and I headed over to Hamamatsucho
Station, where we boarded a coach to Kujurkuri on
the East coast of Japan. We were dropped off at around
one o'clock and did a bit of shopping at the supermarket
to pick up groceries for the two-day stay at the beach
house.
The
picture to the left shows my amazement when I found a
selection of nihonshu (aka sake) with
Florida adverts attached to them. Silly me, I lived in
Florida for the majority of my life, and somehow I
missed out on the massive nihonshu production
facilities.
We
met Kumagai-san's sister-in-law at the local train
station and caught a taxi to a car rental dealership in
the center of town. With our own transport, we followed
the on-board GPS system to the front door of the beach
house, which is situated only 20 meters from the start
of the beach.
I
was hoping to go for a swim at some point during the
weekend, but first I wanted to ascertain the
possibilities of a shark attack. There was a man killed
in San Diego earlier this week when a Great White Shark
attacked him while he was training for a triathlon.
Plus, I have finally confirmed the statistics for
Florida's shark attacks: on average, 40% of the
(reported) shark attacks in the world take place in the
Sunshine State. Is it any surprise I have been so deeply
traumatized?
