ocean day beach day

So the third Monday in July is a national holiday in Japan: 海の日 / Umi no Hi, otherwise known as Marine Day/Ocean Day/Sea Day. To celebrate, I went to the beach! It's been at least a year, if not two, since I last went to the beach, so this was pretty exciting.

Since Chiba is a peninsula, there are lots of beaches, and this time I went to Onjuku Beach, on the Pacific Side, around the middle of Chiba-kun's back (to use our usual way of explaining where things are in Chiba, since the mascot is shaped like the prefecture).

The beach is only about a 10-minute walk from JR Onjuku Station, and even though I only had a vague idea of where I was going, just strolling around in the general direction of the beach was pretty nice. There were a lot of cute and interesting looking shops and restaurants, and I even came across what is apparently the first elementary school textbook library in the world? Just shows you never know what you might come across when wandering around, haha.

And then it was the time for the beach! For some reason there were statues of camels (that I didn't catch a picture of because they were surrounded by other people taking pictures) near the entrance, which was interesting. The beach was hot and sunny and sandy, as all good beaches should be. I've heard that a lot of beaches in Japan actually have black sand (which was the case when I went to Shonan Beach a few months ago, which surprised me a little), but at Onjuku the sand is white (or yellow? Not black, anyway), so it felt like the beaches at home.

The waves were pretty strong (I think Onjuku is also a big surfing place) so we didn't go too far, but it felt awesome to be in the water on such a hot day. There's not too much to say about the rest of the day, which was mostly just normal relaxing and playing at the beach, but for dinner we went to a little place called Flying Sumo Surf Co. for some really fantastic pizza! We ordered a few different kinds to share and they were all delicious. (You can check out their website here!)

So, good times at the beach on Ocean Day. Hopefully I'll get the chance to go around a few more beaches around Chiba and see how they're different!