Blue Moon

Saturday found me at the Morito Beach again. Again, the wind was strong and the water was rough and murky. But like the last time, the water cleared up when I went away from the shoreline. Plus, the tide was going out.

This time, I did come across some colorful fishies--blue damselfish, cute boxfish (even the ping pong ball-looking baby orange one), multicolorfin rainbowfish, flagfish, barred knifejaw, butterflyfish, and stripeys. I did come across a few things that were like, WTF is that?? Google lens said that the feathery thing was some cousin of a starfish, and apparently, they can swim, and the green thing was some worm. It appears that sea urchins come in a variety of colors too. The long spiny ones had an eyeball-looking thing that moved this way and that (a thing nightmares are made of) and Google tells me that the eyeball is actually an anus. Ew.

I managed to get a few shots, but my camera is acting a bit wonky. The buttons aren't responding like it should. The button that changes settings records and the record button erases data if I have the play screen open. Yikes! That is scary. I did drop my camera on the floor, but I didn't think it did any damage. I just found out that connecting the camera to the PC via USB depletes the battery when it should be charging. Another yikes. So that's why I ran out of battery so soon the other day. Fortunately, I have a battery charger that I can use so I'm good. I just got this camera a couple of years ago, so it should be lasting me a little longer. It's supposed to be waterproof and shockproof. Hmmmm??

I was meeting up with friends at a beach bar called Blue Moon. They run a restaurant in Zushi, and the food is pretty good. There's a tea house attached that serves a mean masala tea. I haven't seen a few of the people who came to the gathering since the pandemic. I was yakking away with one and he fascinated me to no end at how he went down the conservative narrative rabbit hole. He was saying, do the research. I will, by finding peer-reviewed literature and finding corroborating reports, not listen to some schmuck's podcast. I've seen how some key words in these reports got twisted to fear-monger or one single use case is blown up as if there are millions upon millions of cases cropping up all over the place. It's really interesting how both sides of the argument gloat or whine about the exact same thing, depending on which side is in power. But I digress.

The beach is a sandy beach, not good for snorkeling. I mostly hung out at the beach bar merrily yakking away with friends. I did go in the water for a bit. I brought a little float with me so I can just float in the water while enjoying the scenery (the mountains, not people, OK? ). Speaking of scenery, I was able to see a shadow of Mt. Fuji hidden behind the haze in the distance. The combination of the setting sun and and the clouds made it really pretty. Too bad my little camera couldn't capture the beauty.

The evening ended with dinner at a sushi bar. I don't eat raw fish, but I do like the veggie rolls. The plum and perilla leaf rolls are so good! The presentation is awesome, too. We usually end up having dinner at this sushi bar whenever we get together at the beach. Hayama is a treasure trove of cafes and restaurants that serve good food (granted, there are a few places that have disappointed).

I decided to stay in on Sunday since I joined the webcam session with Andrew at 2am my time. There were only a handful of us, surprisingly. I thought a bunch of Club7 peeps would be joining in and it would be absolute chaos. The cam worked great, although there were a couple of times it buffered, but it could have been the connection on my side. There was no time lag in sending chats. Andrew said he eventually wants to do away with the Message Center and have only the IM (he has been saying that since the last time he was around). I can get where he's coming from, but I don't want a slew of messages saying just "hi bb." I'm one of those who wants a minimum word count filter added to the message center and reject all one-liners. If it's only the IM, I'm fearing that the maximum word count for the incoming messages would be 3. But that's a topic for another day.

How was your weekend?