beaches

a few observations about beaches...

Japanese people rarely go swimming in the sea.

There are some nice beaches to be found, and I have indeed found some round here. But if they were in England, they'd be packed full of people. Not so over here.

Why not? My theories include-

• danger of tsunamis, if there were to be an underwater earthquake, it wouldn't be fun


• Japanese people don't like getting a suntan (indeed, they wear 'whitening cream' instead), so I think they rather try to surf - wearing a body length wetsuit protects you from the sun's rays, whereas a swimming costume doesn't.


• swimming pools over here don't have a deep end. They're shallow all the way along. So people aren't used to swimming out of their depth. So they find it dangerous to swim in the sea


• the environment isn't terribly controlled [people often come just for a BBQ on the beach at lunch, then pack up and go home, or young people go at night and light fireworks. no full day affairs here]


• but who knows the real reasons, this is just my thoughts.

Last week, I went to Motoyoshi beach, then continued up the 45 highway, to Sanriku in Iwate prefecture. Please see some photos below-sorry, i should add some more coastal scenes... After a nice time swimming & playing frisbee in the evening, I decided that, as I live so close to the beach here (half an hour drive at best), I'll try and go every week.

That was last Saturday. So, on Monday, I went after school. And today (following Sat) I had a morning swim. Bracing was the word, or maybe invigorating. But nevertheless, it got warmish once you started moving...