Surfing

Recently I have been surfing a lot. Usually, in a good month, I get out 2 times, but in the last 7 weeks, I've been out a whopping 5 times!

Mostly I leave my surf board at the surf shop in Onjuku. However, because I wanted to go surfing with a friend elsewhere, I brought my board home. I was so nervous to take it on the train. I had visions of broken fins and lots of dents. Luckily it was fine.

One thing that bothered me was that people kept getting too close to my board. It seemed that they were trying to tempt me. The whole time in the train when people were too close I was stressed out. I was worried they would kick my board, or hit my fins, or fall on it. Luckily (for the crowders) nothing happened and no board protecting tactics had to be employed. 

The next time I went surfing, I had to bring my board back. I got quite a few stares from people stumbling out of bars and host clubs at 6 am in the morning while carrying my board. Taking my board on the train was fine, it was just sad because I couldn't sleep. So I was quite tired as I missed out on my naps on the train. But it was nothing a little red bull or monster couldn't fix.

While I dreaded bringing my board on the train, it turned out to be fine, however, the trains were not so crowded. I have a feeling in a crowded station or car, it would be awful. As it was, with the scarcity of people, I almost hit people with my board. I needed a signal to let people know they should clear the way because I was coming through. Hehehe. If my board were any longer, there would be lots of problems. At 7'2" it is the perfect size for train travel. 

My baby's first train ride. 

The beach. This is Katagai beach. It is north of where I usually surf. This day was before a typhoon, so the waves were HUGE. They were more than huge, the sets were all over the place and the frequency of the waves was high. We didn't surf here. 

This is Hebara. The beach next to Onjuku. It was also pretty much unsurfable with a long board. Paddling out was big trouble. The surfers that went out took a long time to paddle out and then they just hung out not catching waves because they were big, and because they probably didn't want to have to paddle out again.

This is Onjuku, Hama beach. We decided to surf here and it was fun but still very difficult. We couldn't paddle out far and there was a very strong current pushing is towards the middle beach (chuo beach). So that left us playing in the soup, as the Japanese call it. To westerners, soup is known as white water, where the waves have broken, and it's smaller and safer than further out. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there was a lifeguarding competition on chuo beach, so I had to keep exiting the water and walking back to where I first got in. At one point, some lifeguards that were competing in a kayak event lost their kayak. I had just finished surfing a wave and resurfacing, found that the kayak was upon me and lifeguards were running toward me. I was lucky because if there had been a strong wave slightly sooner it would have slammed the kayak right into me and my board. At least there were lots of potential rescuers.

This weekend I won't surf, but I probably will next weekend. I'm loving all the time in the water :)