Love the beach, but sunburn's a bitch

Most excellent greetings my friends and anonymous readers. The weather has been all over the map lately, but we were blessed with absolutely fabulous weather on Sunday. Project Luck had planned a huge beach party for Sunday and we were worried the weather forecast (cloudy skies and rain) would come true.

Maki's friend Kayo was to pick me up WAY early at 7am, at which point I was still sleeping. I was able to get dressed, pack my junk and run the 8 blocks to the pickup spot in just over ten minutes! Not bad for someone who'd only gotten around 3 hours of actual sleep I think. To top it off we ended up being somewhere around 25 minutes early to where we needed to be. Talk about irony!

Anyway, the setup they had at Takasu beach was really great. There was a full square of open tents, and they even had a food and beer tent set up! We spent the whole day doing various activities. The first thing I tried was making some bead accessories. My bracelet was a mess, but one of the girls liked it so I gave it to her. After I tied a bunch of knots I took a stroll down the beach in search of a washroom to change into my swimsuit. Given the weather that took a lot longer than it had to, due to the fact that I was easily distracted by the absolutely insane number of cute girls running around in bikinis. Have I mentioned I love the beach?

After I finally made it back to our pavillion a few other folks were ready to hit the water. (All told I'd say there were easily over 35 people out for the party!) There are some concrete pylons set up maybe about 300 or 400 meters out from the beach, so I swam out there myself and waited til everyone caught up. We enjoyed the sun a bit then headed back to hitch a ride on the jet-skis. I've never ridden on one but man-o-man what fun! The guy driving had it up over 60km and the water was choppy, which gave us some pretty good jumps. I highly recommend giving one of those things a try!

After collecting our breath we made another trip out the pylons with some non-swimmers in tow. I gotta give Rika and Kayo kudos for trusting us enough to pull them out that far into the ocean with nothing but a tube to keep them afloat. If I couldn't swim I don't know that I'd have been willing to go out any further than I could walk.

Oh yeah, I forget about the part of the pavillion where they had some girls set up doing hand massage and nail painting! LOL well, I don't know how the Project Luck folks talked them into it, but they got some girls from one of the Fukui beauty shops to come out and work on a Sunday. I let one of them paint the nails on what started out as one but ended up as both hands. It was an interesting choice of alternating black and purple. Ladies, I have to say I don't know how you can do that. You wouldn't think nails have pores, but nail polish feels bloody awful. I couldn't wait to get that stuff off this morning. Blech. Ah well, I was all purdy for a day anyway.

I sat down for a few beers and tasty food from the food tent before heading out to collect some rocks and shells. "What for?" you ask...well they were taking pictures and printing them out for us to take home, in our own customized frames. They had tables set up with paints, brushes and crazy glue to make stuff with. Being as we were some of the last folks to do that there wasn't quite enough glue for me to finish mine with. But I brought everything back and finished it here (yes, I have crazy glue on hand). It's ugly, but no one's to blame for that except me I guess.

We headed back around 5, everyone well fed, well entertained and well sunned. In my case, more than well-done! It doesn't seem to matter whether I use 20 or 50spf sunblock, I always end up with a hell of a burn on my neck and shoulders. :( Ah well, it'll be a sexy tan by the middle of the week. Heh, who am I kidding? I need more than two days and a tan to be sexy!

And...I'm spent.