The weekend in Shirahama...Australian heaven

Hello all,

well after what was a shite week at work (I can hear you all now saying, Jesus if he mentions work again I'll kick his ass!!) we headed off to Shirahama on Saturday morning, early! It's a small town about 250-300 km south of Osaka. We met up at Kyobashi station at 8am and got the slow train there which took 4 hours...it was long but pleasant, a couple of bruskis down the hatch and it didn't seem too painful. Mind you I think it went very quickly for the Chu Hai Queens, Nina and Lisa...

We arrived at Shirahama amid strange and curious looks from the locals, we were kitted out for beach, all wearing straw hats carrying buckets, beer and footballs...ah the memories of childhood :) One must realise that the strange looks were getting were not the fact we were a 13 strong group of Gaijins (at least that is what we told ourselves), it was the fact that the "official" beach season does not start until July 19th! Yes, on that weekend, we get a national holiday celebrating the begining of the summer season. The Japanese are just unbelievably scary. The beach at Shirahama is reputed to be the best in the country predominantly due to the copious tonnage of sand that is imported from Australia every year to keep it a certain level!!! I kid you not here folks, my tax money is being spent by the government to ship sand into the country from Australia to enable little Japanese kids a chance to make decent sand castles. Aparently there is very little sand surrounding the coast of Japan, decent sand that is. I guess one would expect this from a volcanic archipelago. However, complain we shall not as it was a great beach and it was quiet...can you imagine it being 26 degrees C, sun blazing and the weekend ahead of you, Ballycotton would be black, feck it the Lee Fields would be black with people. As it was not the "season" yet, there was nobody there apart from us Gaijins and the locals. Some of the Japanese staff we spoke to last week thought we were crazy going to Shirahama at this time of year!!! Fabulous people. I took my first dip in the Pacific and it was just as I had expected it to be...salty and cold, but not as cold as home, because it's never as cold or as tough anywhere as it is swimming off Nohoval Cove.....

The beach was the beach so we played soccer, drank beer, chatted, got sun-burned and ate what we had. The hotel we stayed at was a 4-star but because the "Firm" has a membership with this particular chain of hotels, we get a discount on the rooms. They generally can sleep 4 and they are very nice. However, I discovered that my back does not like sleeping on a futon with a tatami mat base. Anyway, we drank and ate our fill when we got back there and partook in the onsen experience. Public baths with all sorts of lovely relaxing baths to sit in, drink a beer and chat with the lads. Marvellous inventions I still think. After an hour there we retreated back to our rooms where we consequently all crashed and burned early due to copious beerage during the day and over eating the Roman way in the evening. Thankfully no vomitoriums were required but the robes were cast on and we all felt Japanese.

The following day was more of the same apart from one of the girls getting groped in the toilets by some young fella so the cops were called, interviews were conducted and photos of the crime scene were taken. No doubt the villian will be apprehended anytime soon. After that piece of drama we took the "fast" train home and that got us back in 2 hours. Sunburned, hungover, sore from soccer (I didn't do anything to G who dislocated her shoulder, I was nowhere near her!!! I promise!!) and glad to have spent a nice couple of days at the beach.

We still think we left our brains back there so we are planning another trip there soon before the beach season opens to retrieve them.

On that note I leave you with the BIRD NOTE of the trip (apart from TM) so here they are:
Black-crowned Night Heron, Kingfisher, Black Kite, Osprey, Hawk Eagle, Blue Rock Thursh, Meadow Bunting, japanese Bush Warbler, Asian Scrub Tail, Little Cuckoo

Hope all is well back home...

Bye for now

Carmo