If you were doing creative pronunciation for "Where’s the Beach?" and thinking "barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen" you should go spend some time with the ‘gals‘ in ‘Hotel Satire,’ maybe even watch some movies with the appendages to atone for mental sins.
I had some time to revisit concerns for my local coast. To borrow from Primo Levi‘s Italian title for the universal and moving, Survival in Auschwitz, "Is this a beach?"
I’m pretty sure everyone involved in this knows it’s just and excuse to keep money flowing into the right hands, get votes into the right (ruling) party, even if it destroys the beaches. Very colonial kind of thing to do if the Port of Madras is any indication. I guess people should just be at home watching the TV or shopping at the mall anyway, not out as a community harvesting fish, climbing trees (scroll down for picture) and just enjoying themselves and the world around them.
People still come out, goof around, have some fun and make you smile -even when you weren’t lucky enough to come upon them when they were being artsy with the junk flotsam and jetsam.
You find indestructable (I imagine) sandals at various stages (pre-birth and post-lost or -trashed).
People you meet here in Japan will probably want to blame this on Chinese or Korean (those Asians) factories and/or ships, but most of the plastic pollution found on the beach is Japanese brand soft drinks. The glass bottle in the picture above was some kind of Chinese Liquor. I can’t find the pictures of the all the various coca cola PET bottles, junk before you (not me, somebody) drink it, junk after you drink it.
The people trying to protect this coast are fun, no one expects much in this ‘you can’t fight City Hall’ or the Bureaucrats but everyone cooperates, and draws more and more people in. The local coordinator went to a neighboring prefecture for a dam conference and brought a sponsor-free journalist to learn about our coast issues. This became a photogenic (in any language) and informative (in Japanese) blog post. This is all an illuminating process.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate