Seaside Life and the Disappearance of Slack

Yesterday, the temperature went above 30 degrees Celsius.

It was hot. It is not supposed to be summer yet, but hot is hot, so I decided to head to the beach for a while.

There were more people on the sand than I expected. Some were watching the sunset. Some were walking their dogs. Some were simply staring into space. The official swimming season had not started yet, so the water still looked cold, but the scenery already felt completely like summer.

Then I saw that familiar scene again.

Near the water, a group of people who looked like foreign tourists were happily swimming.

Blonde girls in very revealing bikinis were playing in the waves. To be honest, it was not exactly an unpleasant sight.

But my wife was standing next to me.

So I stared at the horizon and put all my effort into performing the role of a man who was thinking, “What a beautiful sunset today.”

As expected, a voice came from beside me.

“Ignoring the rules again. This is why foreigners…”

Apparently, my wife had been looking at something else.

Our Household’s Strange Theory

This kind of scene has become less unusual lately.

My wife and I have had one hypothesis for a while.

“Maybe Westerners just have higher body temperatures.”

Of course, there is absolutely no scientific basis for this.

But when people walk calmly into water that makes us think, “That still looks cold,” it is hard not to reach that conclusion. Come to think of it, the people wearing short sleeves on winter trains are almost always Westerners too.

That said, body temperature is not the real issue.

Many beaches in Japan are managed only during a limited season. Before the official beach opening, swimming is prohibited in most places.

There is no fine. The police will not rush in.

Even so, from a Japanese perspective, there is a shared assumption:

“If you are told not to do something, you do not do it.”

So when people casually break that rule, some people inevitably feel uneasy.

Lately, Nobody Has Much Slack

As I looked out at the sea, I found myself thinking.

In the past, this might have ended with:

“Well, maybe it is just a cultural difference.”

But lately, it does not end that way.

On social media and in the news, I feel that frustration and irritation toward foreigners have clearly increased compared with before.

Of course, manners are part of the issue.

But I do not think that is the whole story.

In the end, maybe Japan as a whole is getting a little tired.

Wages are not rising very much.

Prices are going up.

People are anxious about the future.

When people lose slack in their own lives, they become more sensitive to other people’s rule-breaking and bad manners.

Things they might once have overlooked become harder to overlook.

And this is not limited to foreigners.

It is the same with neighborhood noise, train etiquette, and comments on the internet.

This Is Not Only About Japan

And this is not a phenomenon unique to Japan.

In the United States and Europe as well, debates around immigration have become more intense year after year.

When economic anxiety grows stronger, people tend to look toward those who came from outside.

History has repeated this pattern many times.

So what is happening in Japan now may, in a sense, be part of a broader global phenomenon.

While I Was Thinking About All This

I was looking at the sea while thinking about these things.

The sunset was beautiful.

The sound of the waves was pleasant.

The girls were still enjoying themselves.

My wife still looked displeased.

And I was still continuing my performance:

“I am looking at the horizon.”

In the end, before discussing global affairs, the weak yen, or social tolerance, I feel that preparing an answer for my wife when she asks, “Where were you looking just now?” may be the higher-priority risk management task in our household.

The sea was peaceful.

At least for everyone except me.