Momoishi Beach Bonfire

It has been so chilly here in Misawa….For the past two weeks or so, the weather has been in the upper 60s, lower 70s during the day (but very gloomy) and 50s during the night. Considering that the heat is turned off in our base housing and that we don’t have any more furniture in the house, we have been colder than I was hoping to be in the middle of summer. I have been imagining that the weather is like this most summer long in England…not sure how I will feel about that. At least, we won’t have any typhoons or tropical storms there.  We had some serious windy weather with pouring rain on Wednesday because typhoon was “passing by”.

Anyway…the title of my post is Momoishi Beach. So let me tell you about THAT. Last year, after school year was over, we got together with a group of friends on one of the beaches and had a bonfire, fueled with all our remaining recycled homework that kids brought home (and whatever other recycle paper could be burnt). A year ago, most of the beaches along the coastline in Misawa were destroyed so we couldn’t go anywhere but one abandoned hard-to-find place we call Shrine beach.

This year, we decided to organize the Second Annual End of School Year Burn Your Papers Bonfire. This time, Momoishi Beach was open and all cleaned up. The problem was that it was simply freezing that day! I realized then that maybe I didn’t leave enough warm clothes for me.  I had to put on at least three layers…We didn’t allow the cold to prevent us from coming. Three more families showed up as well.

That’s  me, wearing Robert’s sweatshirt. Actually, I was pretty warm standing by the fire.

Kids had fun walking by the water looking for big shells. Unfortunately, Alex got all wet (as usual) somehow and did not have much fun at the end.

But Mark did.

S’mores, of course.

Yeah! Let the tradition continue! Yes, we know, it won’t be the same once the Watsons are gone.

Well, I was going to say that this was our LAST bonfire in Japan, but I would be wrong. Our family will be taking one last Japanese vacation over 4th of July holiday/weekend—we’ll be going camping and bonfiring (….you know what I mean…). 

Five and a half weeks left in Japan…