Yesterday morning was very hot, hotter than any of the other days so far. And the extreme humidity it made it even worse. So we decided it was the perfect day to go to the beach!! The beach is normally a 20-25 minute bike ride from Ken’s house, but thanks to my inexperienced biking skills it ended up being a 45 minute ride!
The beach is different in Japan than what I’m used to. The sand is full of rocks which make it uncomfortable (and a tiny bit painful) to walk on, but the water was so nice and refreshing!! The beach was crowded with Japanese people windsurfing!! They are so good, and they go so fast!! We were amazed! There must have been 20 windsurfers shooting back and forth along the beach in the water!!
After taking a dip in the water we decided to further explore the beach. So we biked (in our wet bathing suits) along the beach to another area. We found a small restaurant and stopped to have a snack. The menu was in Japanese, of course. Luckily Ken can read some Japanese and we successfully ordered a cold snack of shaved ice with syrup.
Before arriving in Japan I had heard to beware of Japanese with tattoos because they are supposedly associated with the Japanese Mafia. When I arrived, I heard the same thing from Ken and Caelan. So imagine my surprise/nervousness when a good looking Japanese man with a nice big tattoo on his arm started chatting with Ken! He came up to us while we were trying to order and complemented Ken on his Japanese skills, and then he talked to us again while we were sitting and eating. He ended up buying us all a round of beers and gave Ken his business card and told him if we ever got into any trouble or had any problems to call him!!
After eating, we decided to go for another dip into the water, and then we thought we would head home so we would have enough time to shower and change for the fireworks that night. As we were mounting our bikes a group of guys came up to us and asked where we were from (a very very common question as everyone still waves as us as we walk by wherever we go). Then they asked if we spoke Spanish. It turns out some of them are from Peru and they moved to Japan to work on the ships! I was chatting with them (in Spanish of course) and they were telling me that after all these years of living in Japan they still aren’t used to the change in culture.
They invited us for some beer and meat by their barbeque! The conversation switched between English, Japanese and Spanish depending on who was speaking. They were so happy to find some Non-Japanese, Canadian-Latino people and all of them took out their cell phones so Ken could save his phone number in them! We cut our visit short when we realized it was getting late. We said goodbye to our new friends and we hopped back on our bikes to ride home.
Once we got home we quickly showered and got ready for the fireworks show! The fireworks were amazing!! I have never seen fireworks as cool as these Japanese fireworks!! There were so many of them, and they lasted about an hour non-stop. A lot of them were the standard circular shape, but some of them were in really cool shapes like a happy face, cherry and Japanese cartoon characters faces!
All in all it was a very interesting and good day! It seems we’re always doing something, we’re always busy and we just keep having adventures!! I love Japan!
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