Sharks Invade Shonan Beach

 

My friend Shiro Iishi cares. And, he's one of the few that do. Not blinded by money or pussy.  He's a 3rd generation Shonan Beach guard-man. Out year round, in the frigid January cold to the record heat of August, sweating his balls off. He's here for what he cares about most. In the summers the drunken college pukes and tattooed chimpira toughs show him very little respect. He's here to enforce the rules-not make them. I met Shiro three summers ago when some muscular teenagers kicked sand in my face as I sunbathed. He made them apologize and has been keeping an eye on me and my safety ever since.

Several false shark sightings had bathers running like bats out of hell.

From keeping groups of white foreigners, who think they're slick by drinking forbidden alcohol out of plastic cups and blasting loud music. To assisting the police in crime scenes, helping the lifeguards keep an eye on the water. He's even trained in CPR. It's a thankless and demanding job that has a hard time recruiting these days.

Usually ignored, today he is busy due to the shark sightings up the coast of the Kanto region the past couple weeks. He gave me the inside scoop on what's going on.

“I'll tell ya Prince, now these hammerheads, they keep swimming around in a place where the feeding is good, until the food supply is gone. The real sharks today are these money grubbing suits walking around threatening to have the guards arrested if we speak of the sharks off shore. I don't care.

I'm a guardman and my number one concern is for the saftey of the beachgoers. Even though they disrespect me and ignore most of my commands.”

Even as Shiro approaches middle age, his jet black locks, the way he talks and the open ingenuousness of his face indicate a much younger, less experienced man, and this has led beach-goers to underestimate or even ignore him. Shiro has some of the good guy-bad guy feel of a John Woo movie anyway, and because he is so blatantly one of the good guys, competitors in the security guard business have gone so far as to write him off as an amateur. They have found themselves out of business and well down the coast past Chigasaki, en route to other, shittier parts of the Shonan coast, before they knew what hit them.

Shiro is really sweating bullets under his Heat-Tech uniform in the August humidity.

The fact is, Shiro is smart, smart in ways that go beyond the savvy of the beach and the hard hustle of his 1980's Kamakura boyhood. He is shrewd and tough, but he is constitutionally honest, devoid of brutality, and so kind that much of his income disappears among the local Shonan residents, the townspeople and whatever down-and-outers find their way to the shore.

Chit chat about how you may have seen a shark is a great opener for the namapa meisters.

Shiro, I really respect what you're saying but it's hot as hell here. I'm on the verge of  heatstroke, can't I just go in up to my knees?

No way Prince, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that's all. Now, why don't you take a long, close look at what's on the news. No swimming!

Shiro's team are told to "fuck right off" by white foreigners, as they give warnings about the sharks meters away.

The Shonan Beach House Association have their lawyers and some muscle walking around in a panic telling everyone it's OK. Swimming is allowed. Shiro and his men are in a pickle. Litigation can be outrageously expensive for working stiffs like him. Commercial litigation and complex cases can often cost tens of millions of yen. Unless there are many more millions of yen at stake, it really is rarely in the party's interest to engage in. The Shonan Beach House Association has deep pockets and corporate interest in keeping the beaches open. Shiro is hanging tough on his stance. Even though swimming is not officially banned, he can give unofficial warnings to keep out of the sea.

 

These two idiots care more about draining a huge carbuncle than the sharks just offshore.

Those guys in the suits are telling everyone it's OK to swim. The sharks are gone and they were really small anyway. They say it's totally safe.

Sometimes they just pretend to go away. Sometimes those sharks, they looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip your hairy, white ass to pieces. Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred stubborn swimmers!

These scumbag lawyers and their goons from the Shonan Beach House Association are the real sharks.

Do you have any idea as to why we have shark sightings this summer?

You people are looking for specific reasons for these events and some reasons have been offered up by the shark researchers. My feeling is we don’t know enough about the conditions associated with the attacks to pin the cause on one particular factor. Many factors acting together are the likely answer. These factors could include anomalously high saltiness increasing the number of sharks in inshore waters, then we have these dirty whores having their periods swimming. Period blood is blood! These Hammerheads can smell that shit from miles away. We also have a really high number of prey species in coastal waters attracting more sharks to areas where there are swimmers, or proximity of victims to persons surf fishing or fishing from the beach and bridges. 

Shonan's awesome bar scene will take a huge hit if swimming is banned.

So girls on the rag is one of the reasons. If those dirty whores stayed out of the water would we be OK to swim?

Could be a major factor.  Additional factors could be global warming, the record hot summer, resulting in more people coming to the beach, more sharks being in the area due to predictable migrations into higher latitudes from more southerly overwintering areas or related to shark pupping and mating season in the region. I saw one old guy with a huge bleeding pustule on his back. He was cleaning his wound out in the sea, all that blood and pus are a magnet for sea creatures. But yes, many girls who are close friends have their menses at the same time, and it may be the biggest reason.

These chunky broads with their synchronized Leak Week are partially to blame for Shark Week.

 You haven't seen any sharks personally, couldn't this all be bullshit to get TV ratings?

Yes, however, the reality is that we are not sure if the recent sightings off  Chigasaki and Ibaraki are  bullshit or reflective of potential changing patterns in shark attacks. My strong feeling is that it is the former and the increased use of Twitter and what not, and the 24 hour access to print and television news has raised awareness of unrelated events that are being treated as a single occurrence.

The huge blood patch offshore can't keep these morons out of the sea.

Thanks Shiro. With guys like you I know Shonan is in good hands.

Thank you. My worst nightmare is that a parent whose children I'm paid to protect says,' I just found out, that a guy got eaten here last week, and you knew it! You knew there was a shark out there! You knew it was dangerous! But you let people go swimming anyway? You knew all those things! But still my kid is dead now. And there's nothing you can do about it.'.  I know what could happen- and that's what scares me the most.

                               These Kanagawa toughs don't realize this is not the time to clown around.

Fuck these menstruating cunts and the sharks. I'm going to buy Shiro a fisherman's platter to show my appreciations.