Most of last week after work I went cliff jumping and beach cleaning with two of the new ALTs, before the weekend of too many teacher parties.

One of those days, we arrived out at our leaping spot to find that there were two large red blobs floating in the water not too far away: The scourge of jellyfish.  One floated away and all was fine for a while, but then the other encroached on our swimming space, got washed up and decimated by the rocks, and left chunks of tentacles floating around thus spoiling our fun.

Jellyfish vs. Tennis Ball: Everyone loses.

In the course of this tragedy, however, we noticed a bunch of dark figures splashing away in the distance: Dolphins!  This was my first time spotting them in the wild, though from that distance I could hardly tell what they were.  They teased us, getting closer and then farther away, so it was impossible to get a good picture of them but we did climb over the rock bed across the beach to get the closest look we could.

Another beach evening I managed to work up the courage to do a dive from our three metres high jumping spot, nearly touching the sea floor on the first go.  My form was excellent except for the part where I forgot to somersault. There were no injuries to speak of and on the next dive I was able to curve up rather quickly.  Next challenge: Front-flipping.

I guess I must be a little too self-centred to think of it, and I actually took it as a bit strange when Shane first asked us to bring rubbish bags to clean up the beach.  Perhaps it’s a bit of Hawaii culture from his time living there.  Perhaps it’s a little strange for me because last summer, at least, there were beach attendants who picked up trash and sort of “combed” the sand, though I haven’t seen them around this year.

There isn’t much of a rubbish issue on these two beaches, probably because of the workers, but certain spots have piles of junk just sitting there.  It sucks to see all the polystyrene chunks, plastic bottles, and everything else.

Cleaning it up feels pretty good; we’ve done it every time we’ve gone out there.  The one problem is that we bag up the trash and leave it by the buildings, wondering if it will ever be disposed.  Japan doesn’t just have dumpsters sitting around that get emptied, and if nobody’s working at the beach then it’s probably not going to go anywhere.  I think it’s good that dumpsters aren’t there, because it just enables people to create more waste when they don’t have to think about carrying it away.