Essay The Shonan blues By Kaori Shoji	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
湘南の憂うつ 4月に入って暖かい日々が続くと、気分はもう夏へと向かい始める。 中でも湘南海岸は、特別な響きを持って、人々を引き付ける。 サザンの歌、サーフボード、最新のかわいい水着—— しかし、都会の日常を抜け出し、やっと目の当たりにする湘南には、楽しい空想をしぼませる現実が待っているのだ。

It's here: the season when the water warms up and when one's thoughts turn to things oceany: surf and sand and this year's cutest bathing suit.

For those living in and around Tokyo, this often means piling into a car and driving up to the Shonan/Kamakura area where lush green mountains offset the waves of the Pacific, bougainvillea trees sway fragrantly in the breeze, and local surfers cruise by on mountain bikes, boards tucked under their arms. The music blasting from the car stereos is, of course, Keisuke Kuwata: hero of Chigasaki City in Shonan and the guardian angel of Shonan Rock. Who needs Malibu when Shonan is in our own backyard?

Ah, Shonan. How wonderful the word sounds to ears that have listened to nothing but office and street noises for a whole miserable winter?

But the truth is that Shonan, like a lot of other pleasurable things in the Kanto region, is largely a mirage glimpsed from an asphalt wasteland of dreary buildings. It's a fantasy product, an elusive yummy marketing concept. Or as Gen-chan, a local Shonan surfer, likes to say: Shonan is great until you get there.

Shonan is less an actual resort getaway than a self-hyped state of mind. We all love to love it, but there's the image we carry in our hearts and there's "the reality of Shonan," which goes like this: After about 2.5 hours of driving through killer traffic, we finally get to plunk down on sand that's inevitably strewn with mounds of rotting seaweed. Huge, hostile kites circle overhead for a chance to swoop down on our lunch, and the day is overshadowed by thoughts of the nerve-wrecking drive back to the city.

Even the locals say living here has never been easy — Kamakura has the highest tax rate in Japan, there's the incredible humidity during the rainy seasons, the gridlock on the coastal freeways and the appalling lack of privacy that comes with living in a tourist hot spot.

How much better to live in the Shonan fantasy, where sunny skies collide with gentle beach fronts and couples throw Frisbees for their gorgeous, pedigreed dogs. On summer nights you can turn into a character from a Haruki Murakami novel and stroll over to the neighborhood bar in shorts and flip-flops. Life is slow and beautiful. And so, to will the fantasy into reality we pile into the car on yet another Saturday morning, hoping that this time ...

Shukan ST: April 11, 2008

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