Living my Life as a Slice-of-Life Anime: Episode 7 – The Beach

I’m sometimes amazed how disrupting a vacation can be to one’s life but that’s not the reason for this post (though it does help explain where I’ve been for the last 3 weeks) nor is it an excuse to post pictures from my vacation (though I will post some)  but because I had a thought about slice-of-life anime while I was on vacation and I took the above pic to remind myself of this thought so I could share later.

Since the summer vacation of 2008 where I tried out vacationing without a purpose except to relax and the small fall vacation from Fall 2008, I’ve really gotten into the whole renting a house for a week+ somewhere and doing nothing type vacations (see 2009 and now this year). So there I was sitting on the beach, listening to the lapping waves of water, watching the sun set and eating mint chocolate chip ice cream – immensely enjoying myself, far beyond what I should be allowed to feel and it hits me; I’m practically doing a live action slice-of-life anime by myself. Practically because I don’t happen to be a high school girl in a band who likes tea or a high school boy that can see ghosts  and has a fortune cat as a sidekick or a gondolier on a terraformed Mars but it’s still close enough to make me realize that the reason I like slice-of-life anime so much is because I love those small normal goings-on that are the center of these shows. Going to the beach? Awesome, I love the beach. Picking tomatoes, creating a feast and inviting all your friends over? Sweet, wish I doing that right now. Going to a coffee shop run by a android that drinks more coffee then she sells? Bring on the apocalypse, that’s my idea of the perfect day trip. I just wish it was easier to make these shows sound interesting to other people.

Sorry if that wasn’t such a deep philosophical point but it is slice-of-life anime we’re talking about.  Now here’s some other pictures from my vacation and the other reason why I’ve been slow with the posting is that I’m teaching my one younger sister how to drive (this’ll be the fourth sister I’ve taught to drive) and we’re trying to do it in only a month and a half which means I’m going out everyday  for at least an hour and it’s really sapping my strength.  And it’s not like she’s a bad driver but I’m exhausted nonetheless. This would be episodes 8-9 of my life as a slice-of-life anime but sadly, not many Japanese learn to drive (using anime as a judge) and thus this would feel out-of-place in an anime. The only example I could think of was Sunohara from Clannad.

Same sunset as the first picture

Same sunset as the first picture

Same sunset as the first picture

The beach house we rented had a lovely lookout.

The owners overstated their beach access but I wanted to get a picture of this cliff from the beach below and after a climb down the near vertical ravine and across the rickety 2 ft. wide bridge without anything to hold onto to keep balance on, I got this picture.

Time-lapse pic of the nearby road from the 2nd story deck, the stars were pretty as well from here but we only got a couple nights clear enough to go star-gazing.

This butterfly let me run into the house, grab a camera, and come back outside without moving so I could get this picture.

Another sunset pic but from another night 🙂