Gamagori

We went out to Gamagori two nights ago, a beautiful scenic spot on the Pacific coast of Japan. It's only 38 minutes from Nagoya, but I hadn't been there in 15 years since I did my initial training at a Japanese engineering company. This year has been so bizarrely warm that it seemed like an Irish summer by the sea. We walked out to the little 'island', Takeshima. I call it an 'island' because that's presumably what it used to be before they built the bridge. Still, the bridge is rather tasteful compared to most Japanese bridges. In fact, the whole area is still beautiful and the local wildlife seems to agree. I haven't seen so many birds together in one place in years. There were some fine fights for crumbs between the seagulls and the pidgeons. The seagulls were bigger and more viscious, but the pidgeons weren't scared of the people at all and succeded in getting most of the crumbs.
We took a taxi from the seafront at Gamagori to our lovely ryokan. It was very reasonable - only 13,500 yen for a great big room with a fabulous view, an outdoor onsen that was unfortunately rained upon that night, and a complimentary breakfast.
Our taxi driver said that he was thirty years older than me. I doubted that because I'm 37 and he looked considerably younger than 67. However, he turned out to be 63 which I took as a compliment on my own age, too.
"That's a great place you're staying at," he said. "You can take your drink right into the onsen and down to the sea."
Drinking is always one of my favourite conversations, so I asked "do you like drinking yourself?".
"Oh yes, I love it, but I gave it up ten years ago. I was sitting around the house drinking all day - couldn't hold down a job. Then the wife left me - said that I was a waste of space."
"Did she get married again?", I asked.
"Yes, but I kept drinking. Didn't stop until I had been hospitalized with liver problems for the third time."
"What did you drink, beer, sake?"
"Anything that I could get my hands on."

Gamagori is a nice place to visit, but it doesn't seem to have quite the soul that it used to. All the ferries out to the islands have stopped. We got our good rate because people aren't going there in the numbers that they used to. There aren't many young people around and the ones that we saw were more interested in their gameboys than the scenery around them. It's the kind of place where liquor shops do well.