There were heavy thunderstorm warnings the other evening at my Niigata, Japan, summer home. It’s a traditional Japanese home, known as a Kominka, that was built over a hundred years ago, just a few minutes' walk from the Sea of Japan, in the Sado-Yahiko-Yoneyama Quasi-National Park. The park is quasi-national, as it includes the sea, as well as my Kominka’s hamlet on Japan’s main island, Honshu.  The other evening, I was tutoring University visual arts students when I saw lightning flashing through my Kominka’s windows. I opened the shoji windows, and we watched the lightning for about five minutes. Then, we headed for the beach, a few minutes' walk away, with our camera gear. My local beach is one of the few beaches on our planet that is growing, not eroding.  This is due to ’the Sado Island effect’, which reduces heat fluxes from the sea surface by weakening leeward winds.  At the same time, the horizontal wind convergence downwind is weakened. And Sado Island often endures a thorough pounding from thunderstorms. In winter, heavy winds and strong Ocean currents bring heavy deposits of sand to the Ocean front. In the summer, so we have a beach and can swim, every March to June, heavy equipment such as front-end loaders and other heavy machinery remove tons of sand for city works and farms, leaving us a shoulder deep 100 meter long by 700 meter wide natural Sea of Japan swimming pool, including tetrapods with ropes attached to them for swimmers’ safety. This is truly the perfect beach for summer sports.