All the way to China

How far can you swim? If you'd like to make a new world record, you could try swimming from my husband's hometown to Shanghai. All you need to do is go directly west for ummm, I actually have no idea! Look on a world map and find Kaseda in Kagoshima on the island of Kyushu in Japan then trace your finger to the left and you will hit Shanghai, China. If you need to visualise it, picture yourself on this beach and imagine swimming for a few days!

My husband's hometown is not Kaseda City, but Kinpo Town. I should say 'was' because in fact several municipalities merged and now it is all called 'Minami Satsuma City'. This beach is called 'Fukiage' (吹上浜) and is 47km long! That makes it the second longest stretch of sand in Japan. Fukiage Town doesn't exist any longer either; now it is part of Hioki City. But despite the name changes, the beach remains the same. (This is the view to the south toward Makurazaki and the next picture is to the north, toward Kushikino.)


The beach itself is very beautiful and unspoiled. I can't exactly explain why, but the sea itself is different to the Pacific side where I have spent all my time in Japan. I guess one reason is that this beach is facing the South China Sea rather than the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean. I haven't seen huge waves at Fukiage. Another major difference is that there are NO people! And no surfers. To take these pictures I hiked 5 minutes through pine tree scrub-land then up sand dunes. Getting down the other side of the dune was not very ladylike; I slid about 10m down on my backside! Oh, and to get to the point were we left the car was a bit of a drive. If you ever decide to go to Fukiage Beach, try going from Fukiage Town camping ground - it is quite a civilized walk from there!

I love this beach but the first time I went with my husband, he said we had to go home soon. He said that someone had been abducted from Fukiage Beach by North Korean agents a few decades ago. I just laughed and said what a tall story! I wasn't laughing about 4 years ago when Nth Korea admitted one of the Japanese they abducted was taken from here. (When I first married the abduction issue was very quiet and I didn't even know about it.) Anyway, I can guess that no-one is going to abduct you these days, but it is a very lonely spot, especially in the winter. You can see why in this last picture - in the foreground is grass on the sand dunes, then the pine scrub. In the distance you can see the peak of Mount Kinpo and its surrounding mountains.

If you have time, do a search on Kaseda City and Fukiage Beach. It is not well known, but in WWII, Fukiage had its own air base. (Chiran, about an hour's drive away is much more famous.) Anyway, no matter where the pilots flew from, it is horribly depressing. I went to Chiran about 7 years ago and couldn't go inside the main building of the Chiran War Memorial Park. But a few years ago I went to a small Fukiage museum by chance. (The Bansei Tokkou Heiwa Kinenkan) I had tears running down my face as I looked at the photos of pilots as young as 15 and 16 years old who flew out to their deaths. I wonder what they thought as they looked at Fukiage from the air for the last time? Boys recruited from all over Japan who should have never even left their homes let alone fly for thousands of miles across the Pacific. I left that museum sobbing and refuse to go to another one ever again. I know the young must remember the war so it never happens again, but I can't bear to even think that some of those handsome young faces look so much like my husband's.

Just as an aside, I cannot understand how Mr. Koizumi can support America in Iraq. Somewhere in America there will be (or maybe there already is) a museum with faces of fresh young Americans who left home to go to a place they would never come home from. Why are people so stupid?

Just some trivia, but Mr. Koizumi's father, Junya, was born in Kaseda.


If you'd like to know more about Minami Satsuma City, please check -->
http://www.city.minamisatsuma.lg.jp/kanko/area1.htm