A Day At The Ocean – Yuigahama Beach

March 22nd was a public holiday here in Japan and a very rare chance these last few weeks for me to get a whole day to be totally unproductive. I love Tokyo above everything but sometimes even I have to get out of the concrete and yesterday I spent a whole day in Kamakura City, most of it on the famous Yuigahama Beach. Despite the brilliant sky it was still quite cold so I made sure to bundle up and of course forgot all about the sun screen lotion I should have applied once every 30 minutes to stay fresh.

Since it was a public holiday the beach was quite crowded, almost like one of the slower summer days, with fishermen enjoying the afternoon’s rest, couples, dogs, families and kids! On scene I was lucky enough to catch where these two adorable little kids playing! To cute for words, but I am sure this family must be pretty fantastic to raise kids like these!

It’s easy to forget, but Yuigahama Beach is a working beach with quite a few fishermen still making a living out of the ocean. The last two photos if of a man collecting wakame, or the green seaweed you’ll find in the miso soup bowls of many restaurants and hotels! At first I thought it must be a pretty rough hobby to go out and find the freshest sea weed, take it home, clean, cut and dry it all to have something green in your morning soup, but then I saw the prices they can charge for this! It almost made me reconsider my career. There were quite a few people collecting wakame that day, and the sea churns up an ever bountiful harvest for the savvy beach comber. Ecological and healthy, a good exercise and a great use of natural resources, what is not to like about these people collecting seaweed? Maybe I’ll bring a couple of extra bags next time. Usually I just fill them up with broken glass and pointy garbage (If everyone who went to that beach took away a kilo of garbage the beach would be clean every day all day). You might remember my compulsive cleaning of the beaches in Okinawa. I swear Holidays is what happens to other people!

Holidays is what the surfers at the beach were enjoying though. I’m not 100% on the surfers bit though, I’m vaguely aware of there being other sports involving waves and boards but I know nothing about them. Most of these very active people were well into their forties and over, and here I was thinking that surfing was mostly for cooler younger people. Shame on me! I liked it best when they were coasting out on their boards, laying down, in the photos I took it looks almost like they are just lying there, motionless on top of the water.

Love Locks

In Enoshima, a small island just south of the coast of Kanagawa prefecture there is a small bell tower on the highest point. At the bell tower young couples have a tradition to hang a lock to symbolize their eternal love. The couple write their names and the date when the lock was hung. I am sure similar traditions exist in other places but I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere else. The bars around the bell tower would fill up pretty quickly if it weren’t for the fickle nature of Japanese lovers or the lock picking skills of the local council workers. I assume the latter reason is why most of the locks hanging up there seems pretty new. So, if you happen to be looking for a way to show your undying love as a couple, perhaps this could be a cool tradition to start in your home town?