Iso Beach is pretty much the only beach in this city. Technically, there are more, like the couple beaches on Sakurajima, and there is Shigetomi Beach a bit further up the coast (though, actually, it's in another town), but they're all harder and/or more costly to get to, so I haven't bothered yet.
To get to Iso Beach takes me about an hour--a 10-12 minute walk to the tram, about 25 minutes on the tram to the last stop at Kagoshima Station, and then another 25 minutes or so of walking. It takes a little longer to get back, since I'm walking slower and it's usually rush hour, so the tram takes longer. It's kind of a hassle to do this, especially walking so much in the blistering heat, but my other options involve staying inside all day, and that's a waste of summer.
Before I started going to the beach, I was a little worried about how acceptable it would be. A number of people around here told me the beach is dirty and covered in ash, so I probably wouldn't like it. Before the other dorm teacher quit, she went over there one day to see what it was like, and reported back that it wasn't very clean. However, Japanese people don't really seem all that big on the beach, so I imagine it's got to be perfect for them, and Louise is from Gold Coast, Australia, famous for beaches, so she's probably a beach snob. Me, all I want is a body of water and a reasonably clean patch of sand.
So the first time I went there, I was pleasantly surprised at how totally fine this beach is. On the edges of the beach, there is a lot of natural debris, but the swimming area is mostly cleaned up. And sometimes there's stuff floating around in the water, like sticks and seaweed and other debris, but usually only after it rains, I think. There are always little volcanic rocks floating around, but those are cool. I might collect some to give away as pumice stones.
Of course, there's a great view of the volcano. Every year, there is a summer event that lasts at least a couple of weeks where people young and old swim all the way across Kinko Bay, and end up at Iso Beach. I saw quite a number of groups finishing up in July.
There are no trees or anything on this beach to make shade, so there are a few canopies to sit under. You can always tell when there's a foreigner on the beach. Japanese people always put their stuff under the canopies, and they usually sit under them, too, because unlike white people, they're trying to avoid a tan. But a foreigner will spread a beach towel out in the middle of the beach, and put a small backpack or something next to it. If any Japanese people do want to sit closer to the water, they'll either set up an umbrella or something to make some shade, or they'll lie in the sun with nothing but their shoes nearby. Anything else would be under the canopy or in a locker in the beach house. At low tide, Japanese people also like to line up their beach shoes (Crocs or sandals) at the line where the sand starts to get dry, and at high tide, the shoes will be maybe a few feet from the shore. That way they don't burn their feet on the way back up to the canopy.
When there are other foreigners on the beach, we never talk. At most, we might exchange a nod or smile, but I'm not a friendly person, and apparently neither is anyone else. Sometimes I hear them speaking German or French, though. I don't think I've ever heard anyone speaking English, so these are all just tourists passing through mostly likely, and therefore it's no big loss not to befriend them. The one exception to the no talking rule happened yesterday. I saw these two young girls swimming, and so I smiled at them or something as I swam by, and then I saw them start speaking sign language to each other. Later when I was sitting on my towel, one of them came over and stood by me, so I said hi, but she just nodded and didn't say anything. I had assumed before that one of them might not be deaf, and I was thinking maybe this one was coming over to talk to me, but then I saw her friend was in the water in front of me, and she was just kind of following her. In any case, this one was not the one who might be able to hear. So I figured they were in their own little world and I could just ignore them.
But then a little while later, they came up to me and had written a little introduction of themselves in English, saying they were from France (which I'd already guess, based on the French beach towels). I asked them if they were both deaf, which they were, so then I asked them in French if they could read lips, and they said, yeah, a little. I figured even if they knew English, they'd probably be better at reading lips in French, and that would avoid a lot of slow writing for all of us. They asked me if I was French, and I thought that was funny, because only a deaf person would make that mistake. But I said, no, I just studied French for a long time, so I can speak a little. What was strange about these girls was that they'd just arrived there earlier that day, and found the beach right away, via the tour buses they have in town, but beyond that they seemed to have no plan whatsoever. They asked me about a cheap place to stay, and luckily I've been looking at local hotels lately, so I actually knew of a place. And then they were asking what's to do around here, and where they can find white sand beaches. I was thinking maybe their research was a little incomplete, since Kagoshima Prefecture is known as the Hawaii of Japan, but aside from the volcano, there's very little draw for tourists in the city proper. I had to tell them they'd need to take at least a four hour ferry or get on a plane to find any white sand beaches or anything like that. But I made some other suggestions for city stuff. Blah blah.
Then I was like, these are two deaf French girls who don't speak Japanese, and whose spoken English must be impossible for Japanese people to understand, and they didn't even plan their trip. Duh bull yew tea eph, are they brave? Maybe they're just fugitives from L'Homme and they had to make a break for it, with only enough time to pack a bikini and a towel.
But anyway, that's my only contact with foreigners at the beach. Other than that, young guys will talk to me in groups, at first mostly in broken English, but as I study Japanese more, less in English and more in Japanese. One time a girl talked to me, too, and that was mostly in Japanese, as well.
I have kept moving the pictures around and adding more topics to talk about, so sorry if it's a little breaky. Onward:
It's a smallish beach. You can walk across the swimming area in a minute or two. But since Japanese people aren't all the keen on this beach, it's never crowded. It could easily pack in a few hundred people, or like a thousand if they did it Korean style, but I've never seen more than a few dozen people there, even on the blazing hot weekends.
There's a beach house over there on the right, with bathrooms (they even have toilet paper), changing rooms with showers and lockers, a little room to have lunch or whatever in, and even a vanity room for the women. It's a room with a few sinks and a counter along three walls with stools and mirrors. Japan is so strange.
The thing I like about this beach is that there are no waves. At home, I always preferred to go to the lake, not just because it's fresh water, but also because I could actually swim in a lake, rather than avoiding waves the whole time. Here in the bay, I can swim around, or just tread water for a while in one spot, or just stand in one spot if I want. It's nice. The temperature of the water is good, too, for the most part. After a lot of rain, it gets cool, but refreshingly so, and currently since there's been very little rain, the water is really warm. Actually, now that it's the hottest time of year, I could go for the water temp to be a few degrees cooler, but whatever.
One time I asked someone what the water temperature is during the winter, and they said it's around 18 degrees Celsius, and I was like, ha, that's what it is in Maine during the summer. What a ripoff.
There are a couple apartment buildings right on the beach. I envy those people, but I bet they hardly ever come out for a swim, except the kids maybe. I saw one boy come out of there one time.
Here's a thing they like to do here, which they also did in Korea--cover each other up in sand and sweat it out for a while. Usually they do it up a little bit from the water, but these are teenagers, so I think they're doing it more for fun than health.
As you can see, the girl is fully clothed, wearing a skirt and such. I
used to complain about girls in Korea who would go to the beach wearing
high heels and cute clothes and makeup and stuff, but actually, I think
most of those girls would end up in the water, and a lot of them might
actually wear a bathing suit in the water, then change back later. In Korea, most people would go swimming fully clothed, as I wrote about before--sometimes with clothing as outlandishly inappropriate as jeans and sweatshirts. Here they have a similar problem, but I think it's worse in a way. In Korea, they were either too stylish or too modest, but at least they appreciated and used the beaches in droves. Here, in a city the size of Boston, with only a couple local beaches, they don't even go to them hardly, and a significant proportion of those who do go don't go in the water, they just bake and sweat, looking pretty. I don't really understand.
Almost all of the students in the dorm don't own a bathing suit. I saw one of my students at Iso Beach one day recently, and she was wearing her sister's bikini. I asked some of the other students during the semester why they didn't have a bathing suit, and they were like, I'm too embarrassed about my body (these are smoking hot skinny Japanese girls by the way, or most of them are, anyway). So I said get a one-piece bathing suit, and they were like mehhh. So I told them to get over it, because they're going to have to have a bathing suit for their trip to Australia in February. If they refuse to go swimming, or try to swim fully clothed, the Australian people will think they're nuts.
