Beach, beach, beach, beach!

Ohwow. Summer is soo awesome! I am wrapping up my first week of summer, and in about an hour I'm heading in to Tokyo for our post-Tajima party. (Tajima was the tournament we went to about 3 weeks ago) So, how have I spent my first week of summer break? Well, not posting on my blog, obviously - sorry. I had work on Monday, and then Winston, Alix, and I celebrated Alix's birthday (and summer!) by going out to that most holy of restaurants : yakiniku. We went to this place that one of the other ALT's said had really amazing meat (the prime ingredient in yakiniku - read back a bit if you need a refresher on how I really feel about it) - and it did - and then we came back to watch movies. It really just turned into one movie, because then Winston and I decided that to really celebrate Alix's birthday, we should go light off the rest of the fireworks we bought on the 4th of July.

The very next day, Alix and Winston departed for Kyoto and I was on my way for a 3-day excursion to Ooami, my staging point for three days of beach! Joe, a really awesome, if slightly crazy, ALT lives in Ooami and has pretty much offered up his place for all of our summer beach needs. He lives about 30 minutes away from kujukuri, and about an hour away from a half dozen beautiful, clear, golden (and white, and some black) incredible pacific ocean beaches. I LIKE this place. So, we went to Shirako beach one day (white sand beach), then went down the coast to explorate beaches off of Kujukuri. We found this awesome string of beaches that pepper the coast, and spent the day at one of many. It had some of the best skimboarding beach I've seen to date, and I had a blast. The sun was hot and the water was cool, and I am in heaven. On the last day (Thursday? I'm loosing track already) Joe and I met up with one of his Japanese friends - note: Joe is a cheater, because he can actually speak Japanese, and so he has tons of Japanese friends everywhere. Also, Joe is crazy social (to put it mildly) and so tends to meet people wherever he goes. - and we went to a different kujukuri beach. That day, however, the waves were really crazy and the tide and the wind was wicked strong, and after about 2 o'clock, they kicked everyone out of the water. That was fine; we just hung out on the beach, and talked and relaxed. I drove back to Kimitsu that night (in record time - turns out 8pm is a great time to drive across Chiba, good to know!) and spend Friday doing a bunch of nothings. With that one day of rest under my belt, I'm off to Tokyo for the weekend!

No time for reminiscing today, I've got places to be!