Blogs

I remember merging towards the profession of surf scribe daydreaming up images of riding epic waves around the globe, clocking up hours on Indonesian boat charters, backpacking through wild landscapes, eating real local fare, getting drunk on cheap wine and filling up page after page in my journals.

Ha Ha.

The reality is, I’ve found myself somewhere between domestic house wife/mother of two typhoon Takanami brothers and feeling the pain of surf magazine editors who spend endless days behind computer screens drooling over those perfect tube shots that come flooding in via digital cyber space.

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Just go?

The advance of the Internet has had a profound effect on surfing. Back in the day, deciding where to surf was a combination of strict weather report scrutiny beginning days earlier, calling up your local surf shop for a wave report and hoping they don’t lie to you, and driving up and down the coast well before dawn trying to work out which local break is peaking.

These days knowing when and where to surf is as simple as a few clicks on your iphone, with the added comfort of being able to search for the best break before dawn from the comfort of your own bed.

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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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