I was thrilled when I read that a local town was looking for volunteers to do a beach clean up in one of our weekly bulletins. After signing up, I expected that the crew would primarily consist of old women from the town pitching together to clean up the beach. That presumption in my mind, I expected them to give me copious amounts of vegetables, the usual thank-you present given by old women in Shimane.
Of course I was wrong and the clean up turned out to consist of me, t
he one foreign 23-year-old girl, and about 20 men of various ages. I think they may have been as surprised as I was, but being that there was an absurd amount of trash to pick up, we didn’t have much time to chat. I wish I had taken a picture of what the beaches looked like beforehand, but suffice to say I’ve been to a lot of beach cleanups and the condition of this beach was the worst I’d ever seen—especially considering that they cleanup these beaches three times a year.
Here are two pictures of the trash we collected in about 3 hours.
What you see there is the beach after we finished. It looks fairly clean, but if you zoom in, you’ll see a lot of debris still in the sand. I took a picture of a nearby beach area that we didn’t clean so you can get an idea
of how much trash they get in this town. Actually, that pales in comparison to the second beach we worked on.
The reason for all that trash? Well some would say it’s all trash from Korea. Others would blame the locals or passing fishermen.
Looking at the town’s location on the west coast of Shimane, right next to the Japan Sea,
I’d put my money on the fishermen. Going through the garbage, there were some items with Korean writing and some distinctly Japanese wrappers, but primarily there was a lot of fishing material: nylon rope, plastic containers, nets, buoys, and fuel containers. The Japan Sea suffers from some heavy traffic, so both local and commercial fishermen—whatever nationalities—are probably to blame.
While we were cleaning, I also noticed something very strange. I saw these fist-sized grey and white things on the ground. At first I thought they were toys, but upon closer inspection, I realized they were puffer fish! As many of you probably know, puffer
fish, or
fugu in Japanese, is quite the delicacy here. I am not a fan of life-risking delicacies, but I guess it does add a bit of excitement to a Saturday night! Anyway, I was surprised to see them just laying there on the beach, all dead and semi-puffed up. We had a lot of garbage to deal with though, so I just kind of ignored it since no one else seemed to be reacting. However, a few steps later I start to realize that there were a ton of dead puffer fish on the beach just scattered everywhere. Over the course of the cleanup, I’m certain that I saw somewhere between 75 and 150 of them. Later I asked one of the volunteers, but his answer was almost totally incomprehensible (So in case you were wondering, no, I’m not fluent—not even close). Can you think of any possible solutions to this puffer-graveyard mystery?
It’s unfortunate that the town has so much garbage coming in from the sea. The people were really nice and the town itself is quite gorgeous—cute houses on mountainsides dotting the inlet of a bay. I’ll be sure to return for the summer festival.
Oh and in the end, I didn’t get vegetables as a thank-you present; I got beer.
Labels: Beach, Shimane
