Monday, May 5, 2008

The Emperor's Birthday and a Beach Clean-Up

Last Tuesday was the first public holiday of Golden Week. I'm not sure how the rest of the country celebrated the Emperor's birthday, but a bunch of us took a day trip to a nearby island. The boat ride to the island took about an hour. At the island we participated in a beach clean-up (of course, this being Japan, we didn't actually know that this was the purpose of our trip.) The beach wasn't very big or untidy so we picked up bits of plastic and other garbage for a while. The Japanese people were picking up all the seaweed too.

After the clean-up was finished, we had to listen to many speeches (the speeches lasted as long as the actual clean-up did!), then there was a rope tying demonstration. Finally lunch. We had been told to bring our own lunches, so we all unwrapped our sandwiches as trays of sashimi and thorny twig tempura were placed on the table in front of us. The food kept coming - miso soup with bamboo shoots, some sort of stew with venison and konnyaku, onion and krill soup.
After lunch we sat on the beach a while, watching some kids play with a dead jellyfish that had washed on shore. We saw more jellyfish in the water as we waited for our boat to leave.
And we saw a cuttlefish in a tank at the harbor, waiting to be someone's dinner, no doubt!

2 comments:

Christine said...

I now understand your dislike for those little tiny fish--dude they look like maggot soup.

I think I have to go dry heave now.

Lisa said...

I'll show Wesley the photo of the jellyfish. I'm not exactly sure where he learned about them, but he really enjoys drawing them!

Even I couldn't eat the krill soup. Yikey! I've heard they are super-healthy, though, with lots of Omega-3s.