The San-in beach party totally rocked! Two days of fun in the sun, pumping music, crazy dancing and interviewing some of the best DJs in Japan. The party kicked off on Friday night so I decided to head up there straight after school, jumping on the big ass diesel Super Hakuto train at Kamigori. While I was waiting for that, I met one of my favourite san-nensei students from last year. We had a great chat - turns out that he's studying to be a chef now! I was pretty proud of him :) It's not university, but at least he's got a good career and future ahead of him. Come to think of it, nothing much had changed about him really, hehe - he still mainly wanted to talk about the genital size o_O Lol. Never a dull moment.

I got up to Kozomi beach, where the party was held, at around 9pm. Not too bad, really! I met up with Dan and Goran at around 9:30pm and we dumped our stuff into our accommodation before hitting the party. The accommodation was pretty funky, actually. Kozomi beach is in the middle of nowhere so the only nearby accommodation is a set of relatively decent minshukus (traditional Japanese accommodation) about 2 minutes walk from the beach. They're run by some old rice farmers, who were really great. I felt a bit sorry for them, as the bass from the party easily carried to the area they lived and was basically going from 3pm to 6am all weekend, hehe.

Anyway, we took some time to relax and settle in, grabbing some food and beers at a nearby konbini, before getting our party on hard just after midnight. The Dex Pistols, one of the big name acts at the party, came on about 1am and we got to interview them after that, at around 3 - the joys of being on the Press Team! ;) They were really cool guys and were very patient with our questions and me snapping away at them with my camera. We finally got to sleep at just before 6am.

We were up early again the next day though, ready to hit the 'adequate' beach! Not a patch on Cottesloe, but it was definitely the best beach I've seen in Japan since arriving. Goran, Dan and I spent most of the day in the ocean and mucking around on a mountain on a small island just off the coast. It was a very beautiful place and I felt truly relaxed for the first time in a long while. Back on the beach, the party had stopped until the early afternoon, replaced instead by lots of beach performances which included capoeira, belly dancing and various other things.

Around 5ish we headed back to the room for a rest, and Goran and Dan headed into the party. I wanted to take a shower but it was incessantly full, thanks to people on the beach finding out about it *grrrr!*. I dozed for a bit and finally managed to shower at around 8pm. From there I headed out with my camera and spent the rest of the night snapping away with it, having a great time :) DJ Jin, another of the big acts, came on around 10pm but didn't really manage to get the crowd going. I think everyone wanted dance music like the first night, and his R&B sets weren't really very danceable. Still, he was pretty good and we got to interview him after, too. He was an interesting guy and had some pretty well thought out answers to our questions, so I was impressed.

I was getting another drink after Jin's performance when I was suddenly jumped on by a Japanese girl who was a little bit drunk. She turned out to be a professional photographer and had noticed me wandering around with my enormous lens, so had somehow worked up the courage (hooray for alcohol!) to come and talk to me. So I let her look through my photos and she picked out a few that she really liked. And then before we knew it, it was time for the biggest act of the party, DJ Kentaro! This guy is the number one DJ in Japan and having seen his performance, I can believe it! His music wasn't the best to dance to, like DJ Jin's, but his sets and mixing were flawless! He played some better stuff as he got into his final set, too, and finally got everyone dancing. Amazing stuff. And to finish everything off nicely, we even got to do an interview with him too, at about 2am. It was fantastic, and while I'm not normally into this kind of thing, it's so cool to be able to say I've met the coolest DJ in Japan :P

After a few more photos and a bit more dancing we finally decided to call it a night at around 4am. We were all massively tired and managed to get some good sleep until almost 11am on Sunday, thankfully :) Goran and Dan hit the beach while I rested a bit more and packed up, then I wandered up to the konbini to get some breakfast. I met up with some of the Hyogo boys and we talked about the party as we walked back, and then it was time to go. I was dreading the long train rides back home, but was lucky enough to bump into Ewan, who had also decided to drop into the party. He offered to give me a lift home, which I gratefully accepted!

Kazu the Gay was lurking around Tottori as well so Ewan called him and we all decided to have lunch at a great little Balinese restaurant Ewan knew of before heading back. Then it was off up the crazy twisting roads through the mountains, stopping half way to jump into a convenient mountain river to cool off. It was good fun hanging out with Ewan and we talked about heaps of things on the way back - music, cameras, Tottori and a heap of other things. Back in Ako I did some washing and headed down to Minato-ya for my Sunday night catch up with him before heading back and getting some long overdue sleep, hehe.