I can't find a translation but it starts with "Let's go to the ocean tomorrow, on the first morning train."
So when deciding if I should go to Nagoya for the day, or to the ocean, it really wasn't a hard decision... Plus, since I bike to the ocean, it costs nothing (ok, it cost me $3 for not packing enough water bottles and having to buy juice on the way, and another $1.50 for forgetting my lunch, that I actually prepared). So really it was easy to pick the ocean over Nagoya. It rained on and off today, hence the gloomy pictures, but really, it was a beautiful day, and a great idea to choose the ocean. Nagoya I can see any day, but going swimming in October, now that's something :D. It's probably the last week I can go swimming too since the temperature is dropping, so I am glad I went today.
I should be filling out my JET application, so I won't write much, I'll just post pictures.
It was cloudy, and I don't have time to Photoshop the pictures, here's the ocean as it looked today.
There was some fog, but not much. Too bad it was overcast, I wish I went to the ocean yesterday instead since it was so sunny, but I still enjoyed it today, even though it rained in the end.
The waves were strong enough for surfing, but ok for swimming too, as long as I stayed close to the shore. I heard it's dangerous to swim out into the ocean because of the currents, but that it's ok along the shore, since the currents are in deeper waters. So that's what I did, I stayed close to shore, not going deeper than the shoulder level. It was fun, swiming along the shore, and the water was warm enough. Although, after about half an hour in the water I got cold and had to get out. I went walking along the beach as soon as I dried off, and I ended up bringing a whole bag of shells home. I think with yesterday's trip and today's I can fill half of a shoebox with shells... Why I need this many shells I have no idea... but I guess like I wrote before, I can always throw them out, but gathering them was a lot of fun. I am going to give two pretty ones to my managers tomorrow, as a souvineer. Some of these shells are actually quite pretty.
There is a cliff-looking thing in front of the beach, and even to get to the shore you have to bike down through the forest along this steep serpantine road, so the ocean is a lot lower than the land level in the area.
I have no zoom, so I couldn't get good pictures of the surfers, but watching them was so interesting. It looks really pretty when they catch the wave, but in general surfing looks really difficult. I really want to try it some day. The other day my friends took me to a Korean restauraunt, and the owner is a friend of my friend. So he (the owner) was joking how he'd take me surfing some day. That's probably not very likely, but it would have been cool though... So many people in Toyohashi surf, it's amazing.
Another attempt at taking surfing pictures:
In case you guys have forgotten what I look like, I took some self-portraits, hehe. Please note, I am wearing my UofT Kendo jacket ;). I have been wearing it all over Toyohashi. Actually, one of the girls in our building stopped me the other day because she saw "UofT" written on it, and she actually used to be a UofT student. She is a JET, and I haven't seen her since (our schedules differ a lot so we don't run into each other), but still.
This one is cut-off, I know, but the fishermen across the beach were giving me funny looks as I was taking self-pictures, so I figured this was good enough :D. Next time I'll go to the beach with my friends so I don't have to take self-portraits.
This is before leaving the beach. The people below were fishing. There were a lot of people fishing today, almost as many as people surfing.
This was an interesting shrine close to the beach. I don't know exactly what it is, but it looked like a Buddhist shrine to me. I still can't tell the difference too well though, so maybe I am wrong.
My room smells like the ocean now! I brought the smell with me :D. I hope it stays for a while!
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