Nostalgia

After we said goodbye to Ruben, who was our classmate and had to go back to his country Mexico at the end of July (it was a very sad moment), Ayana, Maria, Rafael and I went down south to explore the hot, hot summer.

At the beginning we were going to visit Toronto Island on that day, but we realized that we did not have time to go there and come back in time for the baseball game.
So we decided to walk around the waterfront area and spend some time there; it ended up as a great chatting time about general stuff and a discussion about some English grammar (we are so good students!).

Did you know that there is a beach at Harbourfront?
I've lived in Toronto for about 3 years now, but I didn't know about this beach.. Whenever people say about "beach of Toronto" I thought they meant one of two; the beaches, or the beach in Toronto Island. But this beach had sand, and people were sitting, reading, and playing with their kids or lying down to get tan when we visited. Some were under yellow parasols and avoiding the sun, and some were just exposing themselves wherever they liked.
Walking around and looking at them made me feel a little weird. It was an ideally beautiful beach in the middle of such a metropolitan city; however, I could not wipe this feeling out from my head, even though I grew up in the town in front of the Pacific Ocean and beach should have been familiar view for me.

Of course. This beach is artificial. The sand on this beach is surrounded by concrete frames and not touched to the lake. You usually see people or children playing at the edge of the water if this is a real beach. No wonder everything looked too organized here, this is a part of the port park in Harbourfront.
Even though this is artificial, I could smell "waterfront." People in Japan express this smell as "salty scent," (Ayana sensed it too!) and it gave me a flashback of the beach in my hometown.

* * *It is called Shonan-Kaigan ("Kaigan" means coast), and has a shallow beach so people can easily swim, play and sit on the sand. The color of sand is not as beautiful as this artificial beach in Toronto, because it contains pieces of volcanic rock from Mt. Fuji (picture above) and magnetic iron ore (In some areas of this beach, you can actually see the magnetic attraction!), which make the color of the sand darker.


In the bottom picture, the sand seems to be sent from some other country, although it is still the same beach as other pictures. There is beach sports competitions every summer in this particular area, such as volleyball and lifesaving, and the original sand (the top picture) could hurt people's bare feet. Also the sand monument (art) competition is held by students and local artists every year.

Well, I should stop around here.. Otherwise, I would get home sick. Home sick? Maybe it is more like nostalgia. I am very glad that I found this beach in Toronto even though artificial, and I will visit again sometimes when I become very sentimental.