By Mark Crimmins

It had been a long day in the saddle.

Starting from my apartment near Nagai Park on the south side of Osaka, I cycled south on my Diamond Back 18-speed mountain bike through the endless suburbs until I finally broke out of the megalopolitan orbit on the far side of Sakai. Then I took the coastal roads. At times, I transferred to old highways, no longer heavily used, that ran parallel to the newer roads. I continued south until I reached Wakayama, where I took a break and rested in the grounds of the castle.

Not long after noon, I climbed onto my jalopy again and headed south for Shirahama. The ride from Osaka was not short — over 150km. It would have been better accomplished on a road bike, but I had decided — due to its versatility — to tour on my mountain bike. I thus moved somewhat slowly southwards. I took the most beautiful roads and stopped to admire the views, both those of Osaka Bay, across to Awaji Island in the distance, and the views inland towards the mountains of the ancient — and sacred — Kumano Region, across which I planned to cycle back to Osaka a week later.

By the time I got to Shirahama, I had been in the saddle for seven hours. I wasn't exhausted, but I certainly felt the ride. I pedaled over to Shirahama Station and waited for Sue and Trish. I spotted them threading through the station crowds. I had met the athletic North American girls at the Pig and Whistle in Osaka six weeks earlier. After drinking together for the evening, we exchanged numbers. They told me to call them if I ever visited Shirahama. They said they could show me around and offer me a place to stay.

Not long afterwards, I decided that — for my next major bike tour in Japan — I would circumcycle the Kii Peninsula, riding down the west coast from Osaka to Cape Shionomisaki in the south and then up the coast of the Kumano Sea to Nachi. From there, I would take the inland route through Yoshino-Kumano National Park, riding across the mountain range in which Japanese civilization was born to the fabled monastery at Koya, where, according to legend, no woman had set foot for a thousand-year period. From there, I would descend through the Tamagawa Gorge to tiny Hashimoto, cross the Kinokawa River, and climb up and over Mount Iwawaki to complete the 500-kilometer circle and reach my home in Osaka.

And, of course, Shirahama was on my way. I was glad to see the girls. We hugged and exchanged pleasantries. Sue was impressed — almost to the point of disbelief — that I had cycled all the way down there from Osaka, but I was a cyclist: it was nothing. Trish, however, annoyed me by joking, with a suspicious glance, that perhaps I had just carried the bike down on the train from Osaka and merely wanted to impress the girls with a story about my athletic prowess. Her suggestion undermined what had been an exhausting and at times dangerous ride. It also tended to neutralise the tremendous effort and energy my bike ride had required, along with the vision it presupposed. I was shocked that this woman I hardly knew — and with whom I had no history — should so quickly attempt to cast aspersions on my credibility. Accusing me of telling such a huge lie also threw my character into question. What was behind such an impulse? It rankled, but — careful to conceal my annoyance — I laughed off the nasty quip.

The girls escorted me across the area in front of the station and led me down a few narrow streets to their apartment. They had a two-bedroom place and said I could spend the night in Sue's room. I accepted their offer for me to take a shower after my long and strenuous ride, at the mention of which Trish raised her eyebrows at me and flashed me an impish smile. As I was drying off in Sue's room, I noted that the space didn't appear to be lived in, and it crossed my mind that perhaps Sue and Trish were a couple. Sue had been impressed with my ride, my bike, my story of the coastal roads. Perhaps it was due to sexual rivalry that Trish didn't like the respect I earned from Sue?

As an indebted guest, however, I could not broach this subject. But I was certainly ready for a substantial dinner. My hosts told me I would be the sole male at a tiny bachelorette party. A Japanese friend of theirs, Yumiko, was getting married the next weekend and had arranged to go for dinner and drinks with her foreign friends on the last weekend of her life as a single woman. I got the impression that it was Trish who had persuaded Yumiko to spend her last night out with 'the girls' in honour of the western custom. The wedding was to be a serious but quiet affair, and Yumiko's family and future in-laws had decided to let her have this dinner with her foreign female friends. Trish and Sue called Yumiko and asked if she minded if a friend who was passing through joined them. He was a man, but he had promised to behave himself. Yumiko agreed.

I took a brief nap and then the three of us went out to Ikiru Shabu Shabu, the restaurant where Yumiko would enjoy her last feast as a single woman. We arrived first and got settled at our table. After a few minutes, Yumiko arrived and sat beside me across from Trish and Sue. The meal was lavish. It also happened to be my favourite Japanese food, so we were all happy. The beer flowed freely as we wolfed down the paper-thin cuts of prime beef, the cornucopia of vegetables, and the gourmet rice.

We talked about many things during dinner, but mostly about Japan. Sue and Trish were leaving Japan in a month to pursue careers in the North America. Trish planned on becoming a high school biology teacher in Vancouver, and Sue wanted to enter an Anthropology graduate program in Tennessee. I hadn't been in Japan long, so the two seasoned expats shared some of the wisdom about Japan they had accumulated during their three-year contracts in the JET programme.

After dinner, we decided to go to the beach. Trish said the beach was officially closed, but this meant nothing — there were no barriers, no fences, no fines.  This was the strange thing about Japan, she said: once the official closing day was announced, nobody went to the beach anymore. There would be a hundred thousand people crowded onto the beach on the last day of the official season, and then, one day later, with no change in the weather, the beach was deserted. This, Trish added, was very Japan. The phenomenon of the closing beach date and the behavior of the Japanese was strange: there was a rule, and everybody followed it, even if it made no sense. Yumiko laughed and nodded her head.

We went to a liquor store, bought beer and sake, and headed to the beach, about a 10-minute walk away. We had lingered over dinner, and it was nearly 10 by the time we reached the shore. Its famous white sand shipped in from Perth, the beach was a beautiful crescent a mile wide. There were signs saying the beach was closed, but — as Trish had promised — there were no barriers or gates.

The four of us walked out onto the sand.

We were alone.

Trish wanted to build a fire. We foraged for driftwood and eventually got a small fire going. We settled down and drank steadily, chatting freely as the alcohol flowed.

Yumiko, of course, was the focus. Nominally, this was a low-key celebration of her impending marriage. Trish and Sue brushed off all talk of marriage and boyfriends. All three of them took the matter up with me. But I, too, had no intention of marrying. I planned to be single and childless all my life. All three women seemed surprised by this, though Trish nodded her head tipsily with a knowing look, as if she discerned something behind my claim of having wanted to be single since I was a boy. Yumiko, too, was surprised — and perhaps a bit disturbed — by my plans not to marry. Would I change my mind if I fell in love? Didn't I want beautiful little children?

Over the hours, as we drank by the flames of the little fire, the moon rose beautifully into the night sky over the gleaming crescent of beach. The waters of the sea behind us were calm.

Huddled around the fire, we seemed like a tiny society on the vast moonlit shore.

There was an air of finality and departure to this somewhat unscripted evening. Two women who lived in Japan for years were preparing to leave — a phase of life was ending for them. Yumiko herself would begin a new life the following weekend. Even I — though I had been in Japan for only six months or so — had decided I would leave by the end of the year and move to Taiwan. I had a little job at the Japan Women's Club in Osaka, where I taught English on Saturday afternoons. It paid well enough to cover my rent and allow me to save. It also left me plenty of time to do the thing I loved most — cycling.

The four of us sat around that little fire on the beach in the moonlight.

Conversation ebbed and flowed.

There were public washrooms nearby, so each of us wandered over there occasionally to answer the call of nature, but conversational continuity was easily maintained. We talked about our lives, about Yumiko's life, about Japan, Canada, America.

There was something perfect about the evening.

But close to midnight, the moon high over our heads and the quartz sands of the beach glistening like a great sheet of diamonds, the waves peacefully lapping the shore —  there was an interruption. Sue let out a yelp and jumped to her feet. Something had crawled over her hand. What could it be? A crab? But it was a tiny black shape we saw wriggling in the sand. Trish — the biologist — quickly identified the creature as a newly hatched baby turtle. She picked it up carefully and placed it a few yards away, where it scrambled off towards the sea. Ten minutes later, it was Trish's turn to be startled and jump to her feet. Oddly enough, the cause was the same. Another cute little baby turtle had crawled over her hand.

We continued talking about our lives.

Then, after a while, Yumiko, too, let out a wail and recoiled — a third baby turtle!

Sue stood up again, squinting as she surveyed the beach. Her jaw dropped open.

"Oh. My. God! You guys! Look! Look at this! Look at the beach!"

The rest of us stood up and gazed where she pointed.

Across the vast plain of glistening sands, thousands of tiny black shapes were slowly moving from our left to our right, from the higher reaches of the beach to where the sand met the sea. Trish said it was hatching season. Though the hatchlings were tiny, she said, they would grow into the giant loggerhead turtles for which the area was famous. The females swam ashore and buried their eggs in the upper reaches of sand. As the young turtles grew, they hatched, swept aside the sand above them, and climbed to the surface. Then they turned towards the sea and made their way towards their new home: the ocean.

Speechless, the four of us stood there and watched. The three young women told me they had never seen such a sight in Shirahama. Yumiko took this it as an omen of fertility. Watching the newly hatched turtles crawling towards the sea, I felt a sense of awe. Though the individual turtles were tiny, en masse they possessed a kind of grandeur.

Something bigger than any of our stories was unfolding before our eyes.

The moon shone down on the army of tiny shapes. United by this sight, the four of us gazed at the vast moonlit crescent of glistening sand and the strange and stirring sight of all that slow movement — life! It was midnight, but we sensed a clock grander than any human instrument. A plenitude of tiny creatures revealed the vast panorama of life and rebirth to us, and we watched, mesmerised, as the great cycle of generation wheeled towards the fructification of the sea.

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