A day at the beach, onsen, then Toyota Oiden Matsuri (a summer festival)

Now I am about to be extra lazy and paste this from my mixi diary, so I apologize in advance for anything that doesn't make sense!

So yeah my first journal is about my day at Shiomi beach in Shizuoka with Sayaka, Naomi, and Maki! Sorry, it is in English!

I woke up at 5AM in the morning so I could leave Shin Moriyama at 6AM, to get to Akaike by 7. When I arrived, I was picked up by Maki, Naomi, and Sayaka, after a short wait.

We went to the conbini to pick up something to eat and drink, and headed on our way to the beach!

The drive didn't seem too long because it was a very fun and INTERESTING drive, which made the time just FLY!

Upon arriving at the beach, we didn't see too many waves, which we needed for body boarding, but we did see many people in the water with surfboards! This was interesting to me, because in California, if there aren't any waves, no one even tries to get in the water. Things are different here. People would wait for the tiniest wave to ride it, for a few seconds, then go back out into the water. Weird...

While watching the girls body board, I took the chance to snap some pics of the beach and them while the rode the waves. Oh yeah, which reminds me, the water was very shallow here. When it was my turn to body board, without flippers mind you, I would go out as far as them, and when I would try to kick, without flippers again, my knees would touch bottom! I am too tall, or the beach is WAY too shallow!

When Sayaka came back from bodyboarding, her and I decided to play and walk on the beach, when I saw something interesting on the ground. I instantly recognized it as the weirdest, largest jellyfish I have seen with my bare eyes! It was a weird blue color and definitely still breathing! I took pics to compare it to Sayaka's feet, because it was definitely large! (hmmm not saying her feet are large at all!). We wrote "Kurage desu yo!" in the sand and an arrow pointing to it with some sticks we got, but I skipped a very important part before this.

Sayaka had to relieve some aggression with the sticks we found. She was stabbing the hell out of the poor fish as it lied stranded on the beach! But karma got her back, and she got a splinter that I had to operate on for a while. She said she learned her lesson though!

After operating on her finger, we went back to the water and played around for a bit before returning to the car to head to an onsen to wash up and relax after the beach! That will be in another diary!

Enjoy the pics!

To continue the line of "Went to the/a/an" from this weekend, I went to my first onsen after going to the beach.

We were all covered in sea salt, and sand, and saw an onsen on our way to the beach, that we said we would go to, so we did!

This was my first onsen experience, so I didn't know what to expect.

We bought our tickets, just 550 yen, and headed to the changing rooms. I realized I left my towel in the car, and had to go get some rental towels to use, 150 yen lost!

I went to the changing room, the remove all the crap (aka, clothing) on me, and headed to go wash myself. This was incredibly interesting to say the LEAST. Bathing in front of other bathing older men, interesting...

After a quick shower, I headed to a bath with jets like a jacuzzi, that was around 39.4 degrees. I stayed there until 1:30PM, around 20 minutes, knowing we planned to all meet at 1:30, but also knowing the girls wouldn't get out at 1:30 themselves. I was right. When I got out I put in 300\ for a massage chair, and didn't see Sayaka until I was about 10 minutes into it.

When everyone arrived, we drank some juice, and coffee, then ate the onsen's food. Everything we ate was VERY good, but the naan curry I got, everyone said, looked like microwaveable food. Sooo sad!

There are no pictures of this event, but expect some for the Toyota Oiden Matsuri fireworks! Coming soon!

After the onsen, we dropped Naomi off, and Maki drove us to meet Sayaka's mom at a conbini, where we put our stuff into her car and drove near Toyota station.

When we parked, we headed to a place that I believe is famous for kakigori, and ate some. It was SOOOOO good! There, I saw the cutest old lady, who was working so hard to clean the tables, take orders, and take people's food to their tables! I wanted to take pictures with her, but she told Sayaka "30 years ago she would have done it" Haha!

After kakigori, we went to look for a place to sit and watch the fireworks. We walked sooo far, and Sayaka's mom was soooo fast, but we finally caught up with her and started turning left to find that perfect spot.

After a while, and not far from where we ended up watching, Krystin, who works with me, ran up and said hi to Sayaka, her mom, and I. Apparently her friend said "Hey there is a foreigner, do you know him?" and she was surprised to find out she did know me! What were the chances?

We were getting hungry so we saw a place that had okonomiyaki (DAISUKI!!!) and yakisoba! We went inside and ordered beer and tea for mama, and then ordered our okonomiyaki! Unfortunately though, the grill was so small, we couldn't have okonomiyaki, because everyone was getting yakisoba! GRRR! So we ate yakisoba, and Sayaka and I agreed, we can make better stuff at home! Thanks to mama for the food and drinks! ご馳走様でした！(maybe that is the right kanji...分からん！）

After eating and drinking, we went outside to watch another great year of Toyota's fireworks.

We began to leave early so we can ditch the crowds, and not get stuck waiting at the station, and we drove to the station, where her mom dropped us off.

We got lucky and boarded the first train and made it all the way to Tsurmai, then Shin Moriyama, but we were SOOOO tired!!!

Such a great day!