Breaking in the Shonan waves...
I'm not a great surfer. I've only started surfing in May, but can you blame me for not discovering this joy for 26 years after living in such...uh...surf-soaked areas as the Chicagoland area, 'Sconnie and the Hampton Roads area? Yes, I know there is a surf culture in Virginia Beach, but it was not as if any of my friends were surfers either. There's nothing wrong with a best buddy that you can sit on the beach, smoke maduro cigars and meander endlessly on history.
So, that's my caveat for this whole blog.
So I'm a newbie longboarder (who has yet to figure out the art of getting up on the board when you finally catch a wave...either I'm too slow or I am not centered on the board like I should be and am looking down all the time). I first surfed in Kamogawa, Chiba-ken (鴨川、千葉県) on a easy soft board. Didn't catch a wave, but it was more of an effort to figure out what I was doing out there; paddling, sitting on the board waiting for a wave and how to avoid other surfers--that normally meant that I would sit way way far to the left of the lineup.
My second time surfing was in Onjuku, Chiba-ken （御宿、千葉県）, where we (Dylan, Mike and I...aka TEAM HOOK) by pure happenstance met Hayashi and his wife who run a surf shop called Drop Out. Very friendly. Mike and I ended up buying our longboards from them. That second day, Dyran (aka U-Ben), Mike (Hook Slayer) and I spent virtually the whole day at the beach, hitting the water around 11ish and getting out of the water around 6...with an hour or so break after two hours there). It was a great time. At 御宿海岸, a long and lazy moon shaped beach stretching out for maybe a mile or so, there was a great break right next to the breakwater that sheltered the small harbor for the local fishing boats, but there was a good break a couple hundred yards to the left around in front of a Wedding Hotel (no, not a Love Hotel...this place was too classy looking to be a Love Motel...and there were no quotes for "Rest" or "Stay" either in front.). A lot was head high to at the very least, chest high...for a 5'8" guy like me.
The next few times I was able to surf was in Chiba, but that's probably discussion for another blog.
About two weeks ago, I ordered a 3/2mm wetsuit online so I could surf here in the Shonan area until late summer (Aug/Sept) when I could get away with board shorts and a rash guard. Those nine days waiting for the suit to arrive were probably the most antsy I've been in a while--it did not help that a typhoon was steaming a few hundred miles to the East of Japan, probably putting up some pretty good surf last week in the Shonan area. Driving down 134 past Zushi, Kamkura and Fujisawa during those few days before the typhoon petered out further at sea were not happy days. If anything, I would try to avoid driving there. But I could not stop thinking about getting back in the water for a few hours to surf.
I could have gone to find a used wetsuit, but I figured since I already bought a wetsuit, it would be counterproductive to go and buy a used suit while a perfectly new (and un-peed in) suit was on its way to me. Instead I bought a board carrier at Oshman's; a wax comb/wax box at a local surf shop in Hayama; watched The Endless Summer, Step Into Liquid and The September Sessions at least every day; bought an ok old school surf rock CD from Starbucks (how the hell anyone can not have a single Dick Dale, The Ventures, The Chantays, The Trashmen CD at any store is beyond me. Really beyond me) so I could speed listening to Pipeline by the Chantays, Miserlou by Dick Dale and His Del-Tones, Walk...Don't Run by the Ventures.
Then, yesterday it arrived. I knew it as soon as I saw the box, it had to be my wetsuit. U-Ben said that he willed it to me, but I really knew that it was the 3-8 day FPO/APO mailing time the company's website had listed period for the suit to arrive. I really just wanted to sprint out of work and haul ass to my house, toss on my board and drive to the nearest beach that looked like it had anything that was rideable. But I could not do that. Instead, I kept staring at the suit, waiting for the moment when I would finally mount my board and paddle out into the ocean with my fingers cutting into the chilly medium, the salt spray hitting me in the face and the sun guiding me out there.
I finally get home and start preparing to head out to the beach: getting my board, surf wax, garbage bag for the wetsuit, water, towel, shorts and sunscreen. It takes a while to get my buddy's soft rack set up on the car--for some reason I was able to do it before solo, but this time, I just can't get it right. I bring my board down from the house, still in the board bag and try to secure it down to the top of the car. For some reason, it just does not feel like it is secured to the car. I readjust and retighten. Again, does not feel right. Reajust. Retighten. Finally, I give up, pull the board out of the case (to find that the guys at Oshman's had left the steel hangar in the bag...why, I don't know) and mount it on top of the car. After I have the board on top, I remember that I'll probably need money to pay for parking, so there's going to have to be a stop over at the 7-11 or 郵便局 to get some Fukuzawas. (Fukuzawa is on the 10,000 Yen bill...so sorta like Benjamins...and Fukuzawa had a very high opinion of himself, as found in his autobiography or "How Awesome I Am" by Fukuzawa.)
As I'm driving, I remember that I forgot one thing, wax. It still sitting in the house waiting to be used. Luckily, there's a small surf shop on the way and there's a surf shop under Seedless Bar in Kamakura, if I end up stopping in Kamakura. With that mini-crisis resolved, (obviously I'm a real greenhorn when it comes to surfing...I don't think anyone who has been surfing for a while forgets wax on a surfing trip of any sort) I drive down the narrow road snaking along the Shonan coast in Hayama until it meets up with 134 in Zushi. Before I got to that point, I stopped at the local Hayama shop and bought some wax, in case if anyone is keeping score at home.
I don't waste my time looking at the 逗子海岸 since it is a protected cove and is really only good for 1) wind surfing, 2) going to the beach in the summer to scope out boys/girls depending on your orientation and 3) I'm sure there's something else, but I've only gone to that beach only one or two times, so I'm not quite an expert on the ins and outs there. In other words, there's nothing to surf there.
Luckily, there's not a whole lot of traffic, so its a quick drive down the curve along the beach and back between the hills and through the two tunnels-one up and the other down into a sharp curve that will have you driving right into the Sagami-wan if you're going way too fast into Kamkura. Kamakura is the first popular surfing spot (my buddy U-Ben has a spot somewhere in Hayama that he likes, but I won't divulge it, but it doesn't matter because I don't really know where it is at) on the Shonan area, but my real goal was to head to Fujisawa. I pass along the beach and try to maintain a 'keeping my eyes on the road-checking out the surf' posture while driving along the two lane road bordering the 鎌倉海岸. It looked good, good for a guy who is still learning how to surf--its not big and it looks like its breaking pretty evenly and while they are not huge waves, they're enough for me to be able to try to figure out standing on the board without really eating shit...not like the few times I got my ass handed to me in Ohara, Chiba.
Still, the goal was Fujisawa. That goal quickly skidded to an abrupt halt as just past the Lawson's, traffic heading towards Fujisawa came to a complete standstill. After doing some quick mental math and realizing that it was not worth the effort (and forgetting the shortcut that would have taken me behind all of that traffic), I decided that I would break in my new wetsuit in Kamakura.
Navigating my way through some small roads that most Americans would call "alleys," I managed to get back out to the main drag, but was not sure where to park my car--I needed a place where I could put on my wetsuit, perferably a bathroom somewhere--and ended up trying out the underground right by the beach. Immedately there was a sign in Japanese (１８時閉める）that told me that the lot closed at 1800 (6PM); launching me into a quandry--is it that the main entrance gate closes at 1800 or does the entrance and exit close at 1800? This kept bothering me, even as I put on my wetsuit and then as I started to pack my backpack with the water, towel, extra sunscreen etc for the beach and again as I unstrapped my board from the roof. It was enough to cause me to restrap my board, toss everything in the car and head out of the lot. 10 minutes cost me 220JPY. Probably best to not use this lot was the thought passing in my head.
Instead, I found a cheaper lot (100 JPY for 20 minutes) that had a outdoor shower and water hoses so I could wash off my board when I got back. Now all that was left before hitting the surf was getting my board off the car and throwing my bag on my back and off I was to the beach. Pass two guys on thier way back in...I don't think they liked the idea of a 外人 surfing in Kamakura or they didnt hear my こんにちは...probably didnt hear me since I'm pretty quiet when I speak in Japanese.
I crossed the street about a block from Seedless bar and went down to the beach, between the rapid construction of the summer beach bars that grow out of the sand in June and then vanish as quickly in September. The thought of thousands of Japanese people on the beach made me shudder--there would be no way to get out there to surf, unless it was by a not so popular spot, but all spots are popular here. I set my board down and watched the water for a while to see how it was breaking; I was not too worried about going into the breaks since they were not very big, not like our Chiba trips, and there were not a whole lot of other surfers in the water, so I didn't have to worry about getting in anyone's way as I paddled out. Needless to say, I was stoked...ready to get in the water and have the ocean welcome me back.
And out I went. There were a lot of good breaks on my way out, making me excited for the day. It was a great feeling to paddle out, the water running between my fingers, the spray from going over a slight swell and the sun was not too oppressive with a good amount of cloud cover. (I'm running out of steam with writing...need a break).
I saw the first good break, I spun the board to shore and started paddling. And paddling. And nothing. Back out, try again. And I'm going to try again to finish this blog...
And I'm back.
And isn't that a great photo to the left there? So, back to my blog that I couldn't quite finish, and I'll hold back from trying to create a picture folder on Facebook as for some reason, it crashes my Firefox browser.
I'm heading out into the surf, happily paddling my way, laughing as I run over the small swells because its so great to be on the ocean on my board, enjoying nature. I get a few handfuls of the kelp that the ocean had not quite spit up on shore, but no worries. I paddle for a bit and settle on a spot that I figured where I could catch a few waves on the way, sitting up on my board and enjoying the scenery around me. To the right is the far edge small bay, highlighted by the tall hills running to the far end and to the left is the other stretch of land making this small curve in the island of Japan. A few yard away from me, a fish jumps out of the water, at least a foot or two. He must have enjoyed that because he kept doing it for a few minutes.
As I wrote earlier, I thought I saw a good swell and tried to ride it in, but either I did not get enough momentum to catch the wave or the wave did not get full power until a few more feet in front of me where the water got really shallow. I didn't realize how shallow the water was until I got lackadaisical and was knocked off my board to find out that the water was at most waist deep. It was then that I remembered that the beach was pretty shallow here. That should have been a hint that I should have gone out until the water was deeper and then try to ride a wave in where it would hit the shallower water. But that thought never occurred to me as I tried to ride some waves--at first I was just trying to get a wave and I would ride it in without standing up to get a feel again for how the board should feel when the wave catches it, since I had not been on the board in two weeks since TEAM HOOK's last Chiba adventure.
After a few tries, I paddled into a wave and felt that I could ride this one in, the board responded and I made the beginner mistake of not standing up correctly--or even fast enough. I got up but couldn't ride the wave in--didn't get up right. It happened two more times..and I kept telling myself not to look down, but look to the right and make sure I got up quickly to ride the wave. Still, I was enjoying being on the water.
Unfortunately, I could not ride a wave, probably most likely because of my inexperience as there were some Japanese cats out there who were able to ride the waves in, so it was possible to ride in 鎌倉 that day. After about an hour and a half, I took a break and headed back in; I was not tired, but I wanted some water to drink and so I could re-evaluate where to try to catch a ride in the water. After getting out, I felt really tired (I had swam earlier that day and felt gassed) and was feeling hungry. While it was great to get in the water, it was not as much fun as it could have been if my friends were there so we could talk about how the water was and get some tips on how to ride the waves. It looked as if you really had to work the waves to get a ride too, but it was still rideable nontheless. I'm sure guys from Cali and Hawaii would laugh at what was breaking there, but it does get pretty good in the Shonan area, especially when a typhoon rolls through Japan.
After a while, I decided to call it a day and to get some food. As I headed back to the car I thought about how much fun it is going to be this summer surfing in the mornings and after work. Then I thought about surfing in Thailand when I go there later this year with my girlfriend; if they have a surfing school, maybe I should enroll with her to learn to surf...I think it would be fun, but I don't think she would be into surfing. I know she's going to want to snorkel there, which is totally fine with me as long as I get to go in the water.
After rinsing off my suit and board, I headed over to Bar Seedless for a dinner and beer and relax watching a surfing movie and thinking about the next time I head out on my board--making sure I follow through on the basics to catch a wave. No pressure though...I've got a long time to do that still.
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