Zushi and Kamakura

Right after finishing my last blog entry, we took a 10 minute stroll through the narrow neighborhood roadways in Zushi, and arrived at the beach. Kai loved it, but it was one of the most poorly maintained public beach I’ve ever seen. From what Maria tells me, it’s fairly typical for a Japanese beach. There were empty cans and used fireworks everywhere, no lifeguards, and no amenities of any kind. It made for a stark contrast with the cleanliness of everything else I’ve encountered in Japan, where even the subway toilets are immaculate. It’s interesting that beaches are one of the few types of public spaces that Americans are generally good about keeping clean, while it’s the only type of space I’ve seen so far in Japan that isn’t spotless. In addition to the garbage, there were bits of pottery all along the shore (I’m bringing home a cool little tile I found that contains a portion of a natural scenery painting). Maria says she remembers playing with them when she visited Zushi as a child. My guess is a cargo ship loaded with pottery sank in the bay at some point.

After returning from the beach, Maria’s aunt, “Big Auntie” came to visit, and we drove with her and Makiko to see the giant Buddha statue in Kamakura. From there it was lunch at Denny’s (Japanese Denny’s look just like American Denny’s, but they have no American food). Maikiko drove herself and Big Auntie home, while Maria, Kai, and I strolled to what we thought was Zushi beach, as Kai really wanted to go there again. We had fun among the old bottles and used bottle rockets, and then we started to stroll back to the house. But we couldn’t find the path we were looking for. I took out the digital camera to compare the shoreline to the pictures I took in the morning of the Zushi beach shoreline, and we realized we were not at the same beach. It turned out to be the Kamakura beach, so we hailed a cab, which drove us back to the house in Zushi.

Back at the house, Maria and Big Auntie went through a box of memorabilia that was left to Maria by her grandmother. It mostly contained documents written by her grandfather. He was an officer in the Japanese navy, and quite a Renaissance man: there were brush paintings, and numerous letters, including a gripping one he wrote when he got some very unexpected orders to leave the Japanese embassy in New York, 72 hours before the Pearl Harbor attack (he left all his belongings behind and just made the last boat leaving from San Francisco). There was also a copy of a published paper on a discovery he made in the field of fluid dynamics.

We finished the day with dinner back at the Toyoda Compund (Maria’s aunt made sushi for us), and we were very happy when Kai’s stroller was delivered from the airport.