Blogs

With all the negative hype surrounding Japan at the moment, and possibly a lot more to come, I thought it might be time to take a look at some of her remaining beauty. For surfers, avoid Fukushima and surrounds like the plague, but if you like the idea of heading a little south and further offshore than rock-bottom ticket air ticket sales to the island nation will surely attract your attention.

I’m calling this blog series ‘Journey Japan’, and will do a succession of posts relating to safer surf travel destinations in the South. Remember the Fukushima situation is one that will take years to contain, so please travel safe and use this only as a guide. At the end of the day, trust in your own instincts and don’t go anywhere you feel might not be safe.

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It has come to the attention of many of us in the Japanese surfing industry that the Japanese Pro Surfing Association (JPSA) is planning to go ahead with its contest in Ibaraki prefecture at Hokota next month. The planned destination is as little as approximately 150km south from the troubled Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, along the east coast of Japan.

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Taking a break from Japan posts for a while, I wanted to share a blog about the current state of the surfing world and open the lines for communication as to where it’s all headed.

Two nights ago I finally sat down to watch Andrew Kidman’s awesome film, ‘Glass Love’. Whilst Kuni and I were up shooting in Noosa with Josh and Zac from Solace surf shop in late December last year, the boys mentioned this film over again as a life changing selection of surf footage, music and candid interviews with ultimate soul surfers. Not getting a chance to take a break from motherhood and constant deadlines, it was a blessing to slap the dvd into the player and lose myself in the beauty of Andrew’s work.

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Last weekend the Japanese surf world came alive with the Greenroom Festival held at Akarenga Soko, Yokohama. After the event was threatened by cancellations of big names such as Donovon Frankenreiter, it surely wasn’t a failure and as with other years, Japanese and foreigners alike came out to join in the music, admire the art, and watch some damn good films.

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Since the nuclear situation has been slowly unfolding in Japan with no signs of a quick fix, it is now accepted by most Japanese that they are indeed consuming a certain percentage of radiation in their bodies. In past blogs I have mentioned about the increasing numbers of surfers getting back into the water here on the east coast, despite the fears that the contamination in the water is above the safety levels. Although I am not encouraging anyone to grab their kids and head down the beach everyday here in Chiba this summer, I understand that surfers just gotta surf, so I am dedicating this blog today to handy health supplements/foods related to reducing the amount of radiation in your body.

Potassium Iodine

As we know, the release of radioactive iodine is very dangerous to humans, particularly children and unborn foetuses. Radioactive iodine can accumulate around the thyroid gland and cause thyroid cancer. In 1982, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved potassium iodine to protect the thyroid glands from radioactive iodine involving accidents or fission emergencies*. It should only be taken if there is a general concern that large amounts of radioactive iodine have been consumed.

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It has been one month now since Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) released their 6-9month cold shutdown plan for the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and not even the first stages of the plan have been put in motion. Perhaps the plan was only really published to the public for some peace of mind, but it seems since the start of this whole controversy TEPCO and the government have done nothing but feed the public false promises.

Kuni went up to the Fukushima area last week and was able to meet with some of the nuclear power plant workers along with local surfers and hear the real stories, the real truths. It was said then that the shutdown plans were totally unreachable and should never have been promised to an already wary public. According to the workers interviewed last week, areas outside the 30km exclusion zone have detected radiation levels higher than the evacuated zone of Chernobyl, and only now in various international news sources is this kind of information being made public. To the majority of the Japanese public, such honest truths remain hidden. The workers interviewed expressed their concerns for the health of women, children and each other, in both the short term and long term, within the 30km radius and throughout the rest of the Kanto area.

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So we sing, so we live

It’s Golden Week in Japan. For most this means a ten-day break as a series of Japanese National Holidays fall over a week and a half plus weekends meaning companies shut down and everyone hits the onsen (hot springs), visits their home towns, fills the parks, jets overseas at ridiculous peak travel prices, or hits the beach. And what fantastic weather for it this year.

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She’s fierce, this ocean of ours.

There are times when the power of the ocean takes our breath away. Quite literally. For most of us, this is usually when we cop a bigger than expected set on the head and are held down for longer than we are comfortable with. In times like these, we remember her power and embrace it. But then there are times, like these now in Japan, when the ocean reveals to us her true power. Mind blowing, life changing, earth moving power. Perhaps it’s only then we are reminded as humans, how small we are on this planet.

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You can only keep surfers out of the water for so long. Recently goregous weather and very nice waves have had Japanese surfers on the east coast of the island itching to get their feet wet, and many have given in to the wait despite the ongoing fear of radiation contamination.

Here in Ichinomiya, Chiba, we are close enough to the Fukushima plant to be concerned about drifting currents bringing highly contaminated water to our breaks. For the first few weeks after the Great Eastern Japanese Earthquake, tsunami and outbreak of the Nuclear disaster at Fukushima, we were lucky to see one or two brave soles entering the waters despite the obvious risks. But as time has passed, despite the ongoing desperate nuclear situation and constant release of radioactive material into the air and ocean, warm weather and very attractive surf have lured the Japanese back into the water.

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We keep counting the days as more than two weeks pass by since the Great Eastern Japanese Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami and Nuclear disasters hit our island.

The Tohoku region was hit hardest, however the whole country has felt the pain.

Surfers lost their lives up north, and as the rest of us mourn for our community we are also running or anxiously waiting for the outcome of the ongoing nuclear emergency at Fukushima.

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A quick break from my pregnancy posts, but more to come I promise.

As many of my readers know, my husband, son and I are based in Japan, in a surfing village called Isumi city, in Chiba prefecture. The earthquake hit us hard on March 11^th, whilst our little son was at kindy, but as our self-built wood cabin house and studio remained in one-piece during what was the most intense serious of earth movements you will ever feel in your life, we were never to know what the nation was in for next.

We were safe, our boy was safe, but the tsunami warnings started coming over the town’s loud speakers and everyone was in panic. We evacuated, taking almost nothing with us, got our son from kindy and threw the dogs in the car, and got up high for the rest of the day and night. The tsunami did hit our waters, but the majority was up north, so aside from a few boats strewn into the port’s carpark, most houses including ours were spared. We were lucky. Friends up north weren’t.

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For me it was hard to take. My cousin had surfed right up until she was seven months pregnant, and being my personal surfing inspiration I had planned to do the same. But when my bulge started poking out well beyond my own control, at around 4½ months, I had to give up a hard surfboard and look for alternatives.

I still remember that day. The sun was shining, Japanese spring had approached and we were all out of 5mm semi-dry steamers and into 3mm jerseys. Torami, one of our local breaks here in Chiba, was offshore, small and glassy-perfect for the new twin fin Kuni and I had received as a wedding present from shaper Ryosuke Hori. Trying to ignore needing to stretch my wetty far more than I had predicted, I kept reminding myself surfing is my key to a happy, healthy pregnancy and nothing would stop me dancing along those waves on my feet, right up to delivery if possible.

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Chasing Summer, or Swells?

I’ve come to realize that Japan’s seasons are difficult to adjust to. The hottest and longest Japanese summer to date was recorded this year and even the east coast with her usually friendly sea breezes was no escape from the heat. And then it was all over in a day. Sometime in early October, the summer switch was set to off, autumn on. I experienced this first hand, surfing quite comfortably in bikinis on a stinking hot morning only to be rugged up in a thick jacket and putting a beanie on my kid the next.

Japan’s weather is weird like that.

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Island Surfing in Tokyo?

One night you are singing karaoke in a dim tobacco smoke filled room in downtown Tokyo, chugging beer out of pitchers and shaking tambourines to the melodic pop arrangement of the Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s hit ‘Californication’ - the next morning, feeling in prime health, you board a rainbow coloured jet ferry and bounce your way across the Pacific Ocean for two hours before transferring to rickety bicycles making your way to an unspoilt coastline where head-high barrels await your company.

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There’s only so long a beach girl can survive Japanese mountain life. A year was the limit for me.

I was thrown into the middle of Japan when I first moved there for work 6 years ago. In the literal sense, the town next to me held a belly button festival every year as evidence to its central placement on Japan’s main island, Honshu. I pulled through thanks to rock river jumps, canyoning, hiking and snowboarding, but being the beach baby I am Japan’s waves were calling me.

12 months into my working holiday I set off from the mountains and toward the black sandy beaches of Ichinomiya, Chiba, to experience the Japanese surf scene. It didn’t take long to meet my new neighbors. My 1LDK (=as small as your bathroom) apartment was situated adjacent to a set of six beach-style cottages. The entire block was nicknamed mura by the locals, meaning ‘village’ in Japanese. Residents of mura included surfers who lived there full time, and surfers who came down on the weekends from Tokyo. We were all young, we all loved to surf. Every weekend was a party.

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