Going to the beach in Fukuoka! ...and a shocking surprise 🪼

August 3, 2024

As I'm writing this, it's hot here in Japan.

Really hot. Right now it's 4 degrees Celsius (~7 Fahrenheit) above the yearly average.

And while staying inside in the AC is probably the best way to avoid the heat, an arguably more fun way to avoid the heat is going to the beach ^^

I went last week with some friends and it was fun. The water was really warm and clear, perhaps as expected being in Fukuoka.

Here's a pic of the beach we went to which was in 糸島いとしま:

If you like going to the beach, I can 100% recommend the beaches here in Fukuoka, especially the ones in 糸島いとしま. I didn't even edit the above picture and the sky + ocean were that blue 👀

That said, I'm not a fan of unknown marine wildlife. Especially the type that causes pain. So I asked my friends about the thing that was #1 on my mind:

クラゲ (jellyfish).

My friend told me it should be fine. Apparently, jellyfish tend to start to swarm the waters once お盆ぼん (Obon)* is over, and that's about halfway through August. And even if we did get stung, usually it's not that big of a deal.

*Newsletter about お盆 here!

While out in the water, I wasn't seeing any クラゲ and was starting to relax.

Of course, that's exactly when we ran into a giant swarm of them.

Thankfully I was one of three safely aboard my friend's stand-up paddleboard. But there wasn't enough space for all of us on board, so he decided to sacrifice himself for the sake of the many.

A true hero

Then…

…he didn't get stung at all, thankfully. Turns out the water was full of these:

(A pic I took at マリンワールド, an aquarium here in Fukuoka)

These are ミズクラゲ (moon jellyfish), which I'm told aren't that much of a problem.

In fact, while I was looking up the various types of jellyfish in Fukuoka, I ran into an interesting piece of information about them from this blog post:

ミズクラゲ爆弾ばくだんって言いって投なげげたり雪合戦ゆきがっせんならぬミズクラゲ合戦がっせんをしている元気げんきな子供こどもも見みかけます（笑
I even see energetic kids having moon jellyfish fights (not snowball fights) while yelling "moon jellyfish bomb!" and throwing them and such lol

Which alleviated my fears about them a bit. I'm still a little suspicious though, and will not be attempting this myself.

Here are some lessons that can help scaffold your understanding of the above sentence:

Describing variation with たり～たり

 Using と and って for reported speech

Saying Vぬ or Vん instead of Vない

But if you haven't reached those lessons yet, then no worries. Lessons are best reached one Unit at a time:

You'll need an account to press the above button if you don't have one already! Start your journey for free:

Even if ミズクラゲ were safe to pick up and throw at your friends like a snowball, I still wouldn't recommend it. There are other jellyfish that are certainly not safe to do that with, and it's probably a bad idea to touch wildlife in general, especially if you don't know what it is.

Some of the other jellyfish I read about looked like they would hurt.

There's also this I saw recently in the local newspaper:

↑ ヒョウモンダコ (blue-ringed octopus) are really dangerous. Like, "get to the hospital yesterday if you get bit" levels of dangerous.

They're also tiny, which is just a wonderful combination.

Thankfully, they seem to be timid. So they only tend to bite if you try to catch it. Which only reinforces my previous point, don't touch the wildlife.

But do enjoy the beach! …if I haven't scared you away from it at this point ^^;

めんそーれ！

Okinawa is known for its beaches, so that's also a great choice should you choose the beach life during your weekends or vacations in Japan.

It also has a pretty unique dialect.

Can you guess what めんそーれ means?

I know I couldn't haha.

If you plan on going to Okinawa at some point, it might be helpful to give these lessons a look:

沖縄: Okinawa prefecture

Okinawa dialect

狛犬: The guardian lion-dogs of shrines

If the above Japanese is difficult for you, all you need to do is keep hitting the Study Now button and you'll understand it when you get there. When using a comprehensive study resource like NativShark, it's just a matter of time and consistency. The above is from a lesson in Phase Three, Unit 132.

NativShark goodie bag

NativShark Units

4 new Units have been added to Phase Three ^^

As always, these Units are filled with vocab with their own unique contexts that help you understand Japanese at a deeper level, any relevant new kanji, and natural conversations called Dialogues at the end.

They also have the following lessons:

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

Happy studies,
Ty & the NativShark team