Shore Germania
Week 12
Once again I return, exhausted as always, although perhaps worse today than usual. It’s extremely humid outside today and I extended my run a little bit. I’m pretty sure that if I’d flailed my arms and legs just a little bit faster I would have been able to swim around Koganei park. (edit: this post was finished the day after, on Wednesday night)
This week...hmmm....
Well, the work week went pretty well. I was a bit sleepless during the week due to the amount of catch up time I needed to get photos and stuff back in proper order after the week long hiatus caused by my unreliable internet. Which, at the moment of me writing this, is acting up again. Oh well. Hopefully I’ll have this post up for tomorrow (edit: which I did!).
Last week went smoothly no troubles during at all. Again, work is easing off a lot. A large number of my students are out on summer vacation right now. Japanese corporations apparently give their employees a couple weeks of summer vacation as opposed to the more traditional personally selected days of vacation taken by employees in North America. This basically results in me losing a good number of students for the next couple of weeks.
"Not bad" says I.
The weekend rolled around much like it normally has for the past few weeks. 8 o’clock steamed into the station on Saturday, I tore off my tie, ripped of my suit and parkoured my way onto a train destined for...not Shibuya. This time the destination was Enoshima, a large-ish beach community in south-east Kanto. It was a long trip getting down there too, about an hour and forty-five minutes.
Before we hit the actual club, we stopped at what is referred to among gaijin at times as a "Japanese pancake place." I honestly can't remember the Japanese word for it. It's really interesting. You get a bowl of ingredients that includes a batter that you then cook on a...range I guess? A large heated plate. Not sure about terminology here. My pancake that I ordered contained hamburger, potatoes, a few vegetables and was garnished with fish flakes. Very good, all around.
We went to a decent sized club overlooking the beach and attempted to begin dancing. I say ‘attempted’ because the crew was not nearly inebriated enough to really start the party out proper. That took about half an hour. That was alright though. It was plenty of time for us to get a feel for the party and poke fun at a few of its denizens. There were an unusually large number of people worthy of a good jest due to the fact that this party was in nearly it's 24th hour at this point. Apparently it began the day before on the beach. Anyway, the noteworthy revellers will be described in the following bulleted list:
Poster-children for why male gaijin should not wear Yukata:
These guys were pretty hilarious. Obviously barely sober enough to stand, both guys were looking decidedly not pimpin’. Melissa was savvy enough to dub one of them “Alec Baldwin” which I think was an incredibly apt description, down to the stringy-greased back hair. The other guy she said looked like an actor from Clueless which I will verify when my internet comes back up (edit: couldn't figure out which fellow). Both these guys just looked...sleazy, kind of like they’d ventured out of doors in their housecoats, like a retired drug lord or something. If you’re goning to leave the top of your yukata open, please ensure that you don’t have a large beer gut. Just not pleasant.
Bikini Chick:
There was some girl who was having entirely too much fun dancing around wearing only a bikini. The was also kind enough to bounce over to Melissa and poke her for some unknown reason in the back. I’m as confused as Melissa was as to why. She ended up passed out in a chair.
Military dudes:
No shirt, shaved head? There’s a good chance. Naval bases are close to Enoshima. Details on that later.
After clubbing for a while we went up to the top floor of the building sang a bunch of karaoke, where I also learned a valuable lesson in Karaoke etiquette. I was handed the song selection console at one point and did my usual thing, which is to select a bunch of songs which I thought people would enjoy singing. It turns out that this is profoundly uncool. No one ever informed me that you’re supposed to only select one or two songs and then pass it on. I guess maybe that’s something you might infer without having to be told...but I’m just not that bright. Anyways, after the first couple of songs the secret was out and I apologized, promising to only chose one or two songs in the future.
We left karaoke at 4 AM and headed down to the beach. The four remaining members of the group spent the next hour or so wandering around in the surf taking pictures and waiting for the sun to come up, which it did, although behind a veil of fog.
This was a pretty interesting hour and a half for me. I’d never thought that I’d get the chance to see the Pacific ocean from the western side. It was a good morning, to say the very least. Enoshima is pretty beautiful too, with the exception of the beach.
I’m not sure why, but the beach in Enoshima contains more trash than, apparently, all the rest of Tokyo. Not impressive. Also, the sand is kind of a gross brown colour, somewhere between being a volcanic beach and a white sand beach. It’s too bad, because otherwise it’s really, really nice.
I headed home after the sun made its presence known and finally walked in the door at 8:30 AM, exhausted and tired.
The next day I was thinking of maybe going to party that was happening at another school, but unfortunately I woke up too late to attend. It’s a long way back from Enoshima.
As a result, I didn’t really end up doing all that much. I sat around for a bit then fiddled with my camera in the park. Winny’s photography has impressed upon me how far mine needs to go before it’s even remotely competent. Mine is just too sloppy right now. We’ll see if I can up my game in the next seven or eight months.
Sunday dawned with me still asleep, but I was up and out the door by about 12. I needed to buy a bathing suit and towel because I was to return to Enoshima in order to partake of the sun & surf. I bought a suit and towel at Seiyu and made it to Enoshima at about 3.
It was a really beautiful day, sun was shining bright and the water was warm, if a bit cloudy. There were tons of people out on the beach too, it was a really good time. We played some Frisbee on the beach, but the rough wind from off the ocean tended to result in some pretty wild throws, including the one that lost Ben his Frisbee (sorry Ben, I owe you!). We were also treated to the sight of what appeared to be a U.S. Navy ship (maybe a frigate or a cruiser) and, really surprisingly, what appeared to be a submarine. Pretty interesting, although somewhat foreboding things to have on your skyline!
After enjoying the sand we headed to find a place to sit and have a few drinks, but that proved to more difficult than one might think. The beach huts that had been erected to accommodate the swell in sea-side patrons were mostly closing down by 4:30. Oddly enough, the whole beach was pretty much closed by 5:00. We managed to find a little hut that was still open and chilled at a table with two round of Tequila Sunrises. Nice way to finish the day.
Now decidedly in an anti-prohibition mind set, our little posse hopped on a street car (first one I’ve seen in Japan) and headed to Kamakura for dinner. Kamakura is in actual fact a major tourist spot, and I hope to check it out a little next weekend. Regardless, we weren’t in the mood for any of that touristy stuff at this point. Instead we found the first place we could get into that served food.
This ended up being The Sea Castle.
Which was a German restaurant.
The significance of that didn’t strike me until about 20 minutes into the dinner. It was especially odd because the owners were quite elderly. Just made me wonder a little bit, that’s all. The food though, was excellent. I had roast pork and potatoes with some nice bread. It was like something my grandmother would make back home. Exquisite, especially with the good dark German beer we were served.
After that I took the long trip home, smelling of the Pacific. It’s a drag the beach is so far away but I guess two hours really isn’t that far away.
Ultimately not that exciting a week. Nothing REALLY impressive. That comes two weeks from now. I should be at the summit of Mount Fuji on Sunday, August 17th at roughly 4 AM.
Final news: I'm currently running 6.3 Kilometres (about 4 miles) nightly. I'm pretty proud of it, but it's really not that impressive.
Talk to you all next week!
Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello
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