Painting of a beautiful Japanese beach at evening time

Recently we went on a family trip to Matama. 

This is a coastal area famous for its sandbanks that look so beautiful when the sun sets. 

And, luckily, we had arrived on a very sunny day.

The tide was slowly coming in and creating a dramatic pattern of meandering streams through the sand.

A lot of people were on the beach digging. 

Out of curiosity I asked what they were looking for and was told mategai. 

I later found out that this is a long, white tubular thing that doesn’t look appetising at all. 

In English it is called “Gould’s Razor Shell”, which doesn’t make it much clearer for me.

You catch a mategai by digging a small hole and then sprinkling salt in it. 

The mategai then rises and you pluck it out and put it in a bucket of water. 

Or at least I guess so because I didn’t watch that closely.

During my “research” on the net, I found one foreigner who described mategai as a fairly edible bivalve mollusc. 

Mmm, “fairly edible”, could you imagine that description on a restaurant menu. 

It would be like ordering a “fairly edible soup”.

But the people on the beach looked pretty excited.

And in case you didn’t know, the Japanese eat some strange things.

To give a few succulent examples: fresh and warm turtle blood with red wine – they have that at a place called Ajimu in my own prefecture; raw horse meat – they have that in the prefecture next to mine, Kumamoto, which is famous for this speciality – and then in Tokyo I think they eat locusts – or try to, it seems they sometimes run out because of the high demand.

Such strange things are what make Japan such a wonderful place. 

It reminds me of my favorite novelist Jack Vance and his wonderfully exotic and fantastic worlds. 

I wonder if he was inspired by Japan. 

I’m over using the word wonder but it’s the right word to use.

Anyway, to return from wondering to wandering.

I did a lot of wandering across the beach to find pleasing images to paint and I have now done quite a few paintings from this one trip. 

It has become a “series” which almost sounds like the word “serious” and that’s what a series really is, when you get very serious about a subject and paint a lot of pictures of it.

The painting above is one of my favorites. 

As you can see, I didn’t hold back with the colors.

And my sunglasses might have influenced the painting somewhat. 

They are tinted and they give everything a warm glow. 

I actually like this effect and don’t mind it getting passed into the final image.

There was a small restaurant by the beach and after the sun set we ordered toriten which is basically fried chicken. 

I don’t think they offered mategai but I didn’t bother to ask either. 

In many ways, I’m not so adventurous.

We ate our fried chicken whilst enjoying the view of the sun setting over the sea. 

It was a moment of calm, content beauty.

I hope you all have such moments.

And that’s all for now, 

Mata ne,

Gareth.

Postscript

I originally wrote this story in May of 2016, 

I’m editing it in August of 2021.

And I also re edited it in March of 2024.