Japanese Weekend

About 12 divers from the Finatics met up here at Yokota at 0630 on Sunday in order to caravan down to the Yokosuka area for a beach clean up, organized by a Japanese conservation divers association. The beach is the location where Commodore Perry first landed in Japan to forcibly open it up to the outside world.

The drive took about two hours (maybe more), but traffic wasn't bad, so it could have been worse. When we got there, we realized that it was a lot colder than we had anticipated, and there was a good breeze, which didn't help. It took at least an hour to get changed, get our gear together, and fill out these long forms (completely in Japanese), indicating that we probably wouldn't die under water from some congenital disease.

When we finally got into the water, it took a good 10 minutes to organize together to begin. We were told to follow a line along the bottom in our buddy teams, with one person following the line, and the other gathering trash. We dropped down a few feet, found the line, and were almost immediately in a mud black-out from the people in front of us. I felt my way along the line, holding the hand of Scott, my buddy, and groping along the bottom. I saw almost nothing, and sometimes it was completely black (a new experience underwater for me). It took about 5 minutes to get to the other end of the line, and we found a grand total of two bottles, both completely by accident when our hands just happened to bump into them in the dark.

We wanted to go back out to an area without other divers, in hopes of actually finding some trash. Plus, we both still had over 2000 PSI left in our tanks (for those who don't know, that means we barely used any air, and had plenty left), and our dive computers showed only a three minute dive. However, we were told to come in, because we has to "keep to the schedule". So after some complaining, we came in, washed our gear off, and got changed.

We then sat around and waited, and waited, and waited, for at least another hour, before the next event. This consisted of the people involved in the beach clean up standing around some trash and blown up pictures of sea life stuck in trash, while a women droned on in Japanese about god knows what. That took at least half an hour (although it felt much longer). Then we got lunch. This was the one redeeming part of the day. We were given bowls of curry rice, which was actually quite good (I had seconds). After eating, we left for the drive home. My driving companion, Jon, and I talked for quite some time about the insanity of the whole event.

So here is the balance sheet for the day:

Cost:
Time: 0600-1430 = 8.5 hours
Tolls: 1200 yen = $11.22
Gas: estimate 4 gallons = $6.96
Air Tank: Free for me, but cost somebody
Benefits:
Trash picked up: 1 bottle
Lunch: Curry rice
Coupons: Two free tanks at IOP (value 6000 yen = $56)
Gear test: first use of new gear
Story: How can you put a value on this?
Experience: Last beach clean up I will probably do

I guess, all-in-all, the benefits outweighed the costs. Unfortunately, the main purported benefit of the day, a cleaner beach, didn't really happen, at least not from my participation. I guess that this is the most disappointing part of the day, that while I benefited personally from the day, the beach did not.