You Could…

You could be on your way to a beach.

A beach where the sand plays koto with the crashing waves for backup singing, you could be meeting up at the front gate of Kyoto Estación with your icebox, your sun hats, enough ice to build an igloo and bags upon bags of useless 100en beach toys, you could be riding a train small enough to fit in your childhood railway model kit, diving through mountains and popping out along the coast, you could be walking a deserted country trail down to your very own 10 acres of pristine white sand, swimming the warm waters of the Sea of Japan in August, you could be preparing fresh guacamole in the sunset with a piña colada in your hand, you could be barbecuing tandoori chicken in the dark, you could call on to your cro-magnon roots and be the Master of Fire for a night, you could sit around a bonfire, burning your fingers trying to melt marshmallows on chopsticks, you could be laying back on a beach, sand in your hair, skies in your eyes, noticing the Great Starry River for the first time since you started living on an island of neons and streetlights: for every late Summer shooting star you catch out of the corner of your eye, drink your tequila and bite a lemon, if you missed it: drink anyway because it is damn good stuff and made from cactus so it can’t be bad for you, you could start running along the beach, throw your underwear at random and dive headfirst into the sea for midnight skinny dipping, you could light up the sky and wake up the fishes with fireworks until you run out of lighters or energy, whichever comes first, you could be playing poker with a flashlight and a stash of one-yen coin and realise that beachwear makes for very quick rounds of strip poker, you could be falling asleep with the sound of waves crashing at your feet, you could be eating chocolate on bread for breakfast with an aftertaste of salt on your lips, you could be making fresh yakisoba with grilled slices of pumpkin for dessert, you could be spending your day playing in the waves or napping in the shadow, you could be listening to the sand singing under your feet, you could be doing a thousand other things under the sun…

Of course, you could.

Happy birthday to me. Another year of backward aging and waning maturity on the way back to infantile bliss.

4 comments

  1. Indeed !!!! Happy Happy Happy birthday to you! I suspect you will celebrate in style as usual.

    Many many presents!

    Might you be in TYO around new years?

  2. Happy (supar belated, apparently) birthday to you!

    Sounds like quite a beach there my friend, although it’s a mighty haul from Kanto to ura nihon just to go to a beach heh heh.

    Actually as summer winds down, I’ve been thinking about hitting up one last beach before the chill winds of autumn sweep their way down past this way. Hmmm…. where to go?

  3. Peter: nope, I will actually be in your homeland from mid-december to mid-march. Three months in Berlin, furthering inter-lab relations with much beer and würstchen… Sorry: seems like we’ll miss each other again this year.

    panda: well, since I live in Kansai, it wasn’t such a long haul (took about 3 hours by train). I must say that there are absolutely no comparison with the usual Kanto beaches (whether Kamakura/Enoshima side or Chiba) in terms of cleanliness, beauty of the natural surrounding and general level of enjoyment…
    But I’m sure you can find other secluded beaches along the way without coming all the way here…

Comments are closed.