The Least Useful Guide to Fukuoka

For the past several days, heavy machines have been occupying a beach near my flat to level out the ground.

According to a company which looks after the beach under the contracts with the city council, this beach is 100% man-made, so unlike natural beaches, it can’t look after itself. The ground can get uneven and the water doesn’t have self-purification ability. As a result, it needs to be cleaned and levelled every single year.

Although cleaning ladies pick up rubbishes every week, moving sand seems to need something more powerful.

I was not going to blame the city council for having made such a costly beach (actually I like watching heavy machineries at work).  But how would you think about the fact that you can’t swim here because of (according to the city council regulations) the bottom of the sea is uneven and the seawater is not clean enough.  And, there are many ‘natural’ and well-equipped swimming beaches within a 10km radius. So where is the point of this work?  For beach volleyballers?

Hint: the land-reclaiming projects here started in the 1980s when no one would have thought our economy (and tax revenues) would be in this situation.