Sand in my Socks.

The two times that I have felt most lost in my entire life have both been while searching for the ocean.

The first time, I went on a 40-minute car ride through Guatemala.

It was supposed to be 40 minutes, but 3 hours later, I was driving around in circles on a dirt road with pot-holes the size of my car. I didn't see another vehicle during the whole trip, except for a bicycle with 3 full-sized adults, one carrying a baby and another holding a leash which dragged a skinny little dog behind.

When we drove by, people stopped whatever they were doing and turned around to watch our car go by.


After ducking down another smaller dirt road, we drove the car onto a tiny little ferry that tugged us across a river and onward to the ocean with the hammocks and beaches of burning black sand.



This time, alone in Japan, I felt almost as lost.

Luckily, I didn't feel nearly as scared.

After visiting 3 of Kelly's classes on Friday, I borrowed her camera and the good bicycle and set out, once again, to find the ocean.


I didn't take a map with me, which is always a brilliant thing to do when you don't know the language, don't know where you're going and aren't completely confident of where you are in the first place.

The only real directions I had were to go past a line of trees.


Actually, that turned out to be really good directions. I rode the bike in the basic direction for about an hour, trying to remember ridiculous markers along the road such as "There was an empty beer can on the sidewalk at the intersection where I turned." and "I passed a fence with blue flowers growing out of it."

Then I drove through a few acres (or whatever the metric equivalent is) of farm-land where there were no cars, but plenty of fisherman hanging over little bridges. Again, I left my trail of bread crumbs with movable landmarks such as "I passed a fisherman with a red squiggle on his shirt."

What can I say? I'm a genius.

Anyway, I found that line of trees I was looking for.

I had to cross over some orange cones and chains to get there. There were signs that I could only assume said for me not to enter, but I couldn't read them, so I chugged along. It looked like something out of Blair Witch. I could just see Ben Ariel screaming "It's NOT a moo cow!"



I again crossed a river, just as I had in Guatemala.

Then another ten minutes later, my gravel pathway turned to sand and the forest behind me disappeared.

The beach was huge and completely empty save two guys with fishing poles.

One said something to me in Japanese.

I responded with one of the two sentences I know. "nihongo ga wakarimasen." (I don't understand Japanese).

The guy laughed to his friend and said the only other sentence I know, "Eigo ga wakarimasen" (I don't understand English.)

We smiled at each other and then they disappeared.

I only found one shell. I mailed it to my Papa. If you're lucky, he'll show it to you.