Beach barbecue

At the end of July, some of the teachers from Tsushima High had a beach barbecue, and I happily went along. We went to a beach I hadn't seen yet, though it turns out to be almost the nearest beach to me. My car's share of the supplies was two big ice chests, and we stopped at a commercial fishing dock for the ice. The teacher I was with paid the dock guy, and we used their gigantic ice-for-the-fishing-boats-to-keep-their-fish-fresh machine. The only part of the apparatus we saw was a rubber pipe about two feet in diameter. There must have been a glacier being butchered by a buzzsaw at the other end, judging by how much ice this thing shot out. $10 got us 100kg, which is about 200 pounds. All that came out in about ten seconds, and the ice chests were practically buried by the excess.

The beach itself is called Oura, and instead of sand, its shores are rocky. The rocks are smooth, though, so walking on them is more uncomfortable than actually dangerous. Raised above the beach is a picnic area, with six or seven five-foot-square brick pits for barbecuing. There were about twelve teachers there, and half of those had brought their wives and children. (None of the married women teachers came.) They had prepared customary barbecue fare--hot dogs (they call them wieners here, which still makes the third grader in me giggle), thinly sliced beef, and corn on the cob. In addition, though, they had sliced up some carrots, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and potatoes. I quickly realized the Japanese tendency to never do anything halfway extends to cookouts as well.

Everyone had a blast talking and eating, and I met a girl who was visiting from Nagasaki. She's dating one of the teachers at Tsushima High, and she wants to be an English teacher. I found out from her that qualifying to teach in Japan requires a series of standardized tests, and she was just beginning down that path. Her English was awesome, though--she was an exchange student to Australia in high school. Having a Japanese girl talk to me in English with an Australian accent kind of blew my mind.

One of the other English teachers had assumed the role of grill master, but when he took a break after a while, he asked me if I'd brought my frisbee. Having lived in Myers for two years, I hardly ever go outside without a frisbee; of course I'd brought one with me. He and I threw for a while, which got a couple of the other guys to join in.

The main attraction at Oura is the swimming. There's a large tide wall that isolates the beach area from the sea, and the water gets to about twenty meters deep. There's a large concrete platform on the beach side of the wall, and you can jump off into the water. Lots of kids were doing it, and some adults were, too. Once some of the other teachers ran off to do it, I figured it'd be ironic if I used that as an excuse to jump off the platform.

When I got here last year, I discovered I'm kind of a weenie when it comes to being in deep water if I can't see the bottom. I think it comes from reading things like Sphere and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and watching too many videos like this on YouTube. When I heard that Japan gets jellyfish the size of refrigerators, that pretty much turned fear of something imagined into fear of something probably there. I've tried overcoming that fear this summer. That's been a big part of my push to go swimming and snorkeling every chance I get.

Anyway, I swam out to the platform, mustered all the courage I could, and jumped right in. Of course nothing went wrong; it was awesome. I haven't had that much fun in the water since we used to spend afternoons lining up and jumping into a swimming pool. I borrowed one of the teachers' masks and took a peek at what we were jumping into. All I saw was clear water, with beautiful blue and green fish dancing around. No jellyfish, no urchins (not around our platform, anyway), and no giant squid waiting to grab unsuspecting American teachers of English.

Later, some Tsushima High students showed up. The teacher in charge of the grill asked them something about catching some fish for him to cook. When they half-jokingly said they'd be happy to, except they hadn't brought any equipment, he called their bluff: he gave one of them a mask, snorkel, screwdriver (for prying), a mesh bag, and swimming shoes. The boy and his friends darted off, and about an hour later, they showed up with two sea urchins. The urchins were still very much alive, their spines still shifting around. The teacher thanked the students and, without hesitating, flipped the urchins over, used the screwdriver to crack open their bodies (I later learned the technical term is test, and put each half on the grill. After a minute or two, he took one piece off and tucked into it with his chopsticks. He gave the student another piece, thanked him again, and offered some to everyone else. I've tried it before (thankfully before I read about what part is eaten), so I passed, but everyone else raved about how delicious it was.

Alas, my deceased camera was unable to take pictures of the occasion.