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.