San In Beach Party

This year was the last year that Tottori Prefecture would host the relatively famous "San In Beach Party." I was going to go with JET, but it would have cost me an arm and a leg, so when I was invited by some friends that were going to drive--I thought, YaH!

We left around 7:30p.m. We all had to work, so we couldn't really go any earlier. The drive was scheduled to take around 5-6 hours. So its really great we left late, because we took the toll roads. Usually the price one way on that toll road is $70!! But because we exited the toll road after midnight, it was only $10! It was pretty funny, because we had to pull over and wait it out. Heck yeah, I'm all about stopping on the side of the road for 20 minutes so that the clock will hit midnight!

Here, the girls are planning our trip out at the first rest stop we came across. I'm in love with Japanese rest stops. No sleezy looking characters. Free tea. Free maps. This trip planner (the machine they are on) that was suppose to get us where we needed to go easily.

As I would find out a few hours later, the machine was just about as good as Mapquest. Darn you Mapquest! Darn you Japanese map-machines!

We got pretty lost. The whole area we were in was pretty countryside. So there were barely any roadsigns, no streetlights, no gas-stations, no McDonalds. :) No one to help us if we didn't find our way. I think the being lost took away about 2 hours. Not too bad, right?

We finally made it to the beachside campsite at 3:30a.m. Step one-bring in the tent, and set it up. We had to wind our way through people that were dancing, laughing, and others that could barely walk. But we managed to get the tent up!

We ended up having a party in the back of the car, because even though ALL three of us brought in ONLY a tent on our first entry, no one happened to tell us that any form of liquid would only be allowed in on that first entry. Not even water! But we met many cool people out in the parking lot that encountered the same problem as us. No one was aware of this "first entry only" policy.

After trying to get some sleep (the dance music was on all night!) we got some "sun" (it was a very gloomy weekend), made some more friends, and got stung by Jellyfish!!! Ohhhh I want to say that this was the first Jellyfish sting of my life, but I can't really remember. I knew exactly what was happening to me, but was kind of powerless to stop it! It was a terrible terrible sting! The color on my legs there, is just iodine. But a closer picture would show a terrible, bubbly rash, that freaked me out! (and hurt)

Here was the view from our tent. The beach was really nice. I want to guess there were only about 600 people there this year. Don't know why it was the last year, but its really a shame, because its awesome. Here is some info from a previous year, if you want to get a feel for what went down. click click.

Goodbye Kozumi Beach!