Tanjobi (Birthday)

Since I don't normally live close enough to a beach to take advantage of my summer birthday my friends and I decided to have a beach party to celebrate the day. We went to Utsumi beach which is about an hour south of Nagoya by train. The beach was really nice, not too crowded, and the water was warm and clear.


We brought a cooler of libations and beach balls, bubbles, squirt guns, and other such fun beach items. Around 4:00 most of the Japanese beach goers start to pack it in and head home, but we were all excited to watch the sunset on the beach.


Vacation is over tomorrow and we wanted to make the best of our remaining free time. We stayed until it was dark (unsure of what time it was) and then found a little beach bar that had good food and more drinks. By the time we decided to head back to the station (which was about a 15 minute walk from the beach) it was a little after 10:00pm. No one thought to look at what time the last train left since we didn't think we'd be there for that long and usually the last trains leave around 11:30-12:30, depending on where you are. The last train from Utsumi left at 10:20. We arrived at the completely dark station at 10:26.

Doug, Takuya, Shannon, and Kate, dismayed at the train station.

We briefly considered taking some taxis but it would have been ludicrously expensive, so we opted for Mos Burger (the Japanese equivalent McDonald's) until it closed and then sleeping on the beach like bums until the sun came up/the trains started running again (which was around 5:30). It was definitely a memorable experience, and now I can cross "sleep outside like I'm homeless" off my "things to do in Japan" list.

On the train home I felt pretty out of place, considering my get up looked something like this (minus the hat)...

The other train passengers at that time of morning were all businessmen with their briefcases on their way to work. I hope I didn't get them sandy.




I put up pictures from my summer vacation in Nagano on Flickr (www.flickr.com). Search for me under people. The pictures from the trip are titled Summer Vacation. The short of it is My friend Kate and I went to Nagano prefecture for about 5 days from Aug. 10th-14th. We took the train to Matsumoto, stayed there overnight, then took a bus to Kamikochi (a national park of sorts). We camped for two nights with hiking and other such activities. Then we took the bus back to Matsumoto and went sightseeing around the city. The last day we went to a hot springs and then took the train back to Nagoya. It was pretty great and relaxing and everything a summer vacation should be.

Marine Day

July 20th was a national holiday (Marine Day) so I had three days off work in a row. Huzzah! There was a pretty spectacular fireworks display down at the Nagoya port. All of my students told me they weren't going because it would be really crowded. They weren't wrong. Some friends and I went and even though it looked as if it would start raining again at any second, there were thousands of people down by the water.



The show started around 7:30 and lasted a good hour. The fireworks were pretty great, as was the crowd reaction. They don't literally "ooo" and "ahh", but it's pretty darn close. I must admit I got a little carried with the fireworks setting I recently discovered was on my camera. I'd never tried it out before, and some of them came out pretty well.


We found a place sort of behind a tree (which you can make out in the pictures) so by the end my pictures started looking more like forest fires. Especially with how smokey the finale was. They were pretty spectacular. It seems like in the summer here someone is setting off fireworks practically every weekend.

Work is going pretty well, summer vacation is just around the corner. Hurray!