Planting The Seed

I set out for Japan with high hopes for life changing ramen, fresh sushi, and crispy tempura. My expectations for the surf were low to very low, but it didn't bother me. This was my best year of surf yet, having scored big on extended stays in Morocco and South Africa. I was in a rare state, still high from catching waves that far exceeded anything I'd ever ridden before, and was going into December content with mediocre waves or even no surf at all.

I was well aware, however, that the itch for surf could return at any time and with the same or greater voracity. The rat had been fed well this year and was in a nice slumber, but I knew when it woke up it would have a renewed appetite and higher standards.

So when Takeo connected me with a surfer from England who had been living in Japan for ten years, I had mixed feelings about utilizing the contact. I knew Japan could have good surf, but had no idea where and assumed it was a rare event. Should I spend time and money seeking out waves and risk the disappointment or just enjoy the food and scenery in an ignorant bliss?

The Japanese surf scene is more opaque and difficult to navigate than anywhere else I've traveled to. While I'd seen videos of river mouths with overhead reeling barrels, the locations were always conveniently hidden. There was no J Bay or Anchor Point of Japan acting as an obvious starting point for me. Taito beach in Chiba was the most well known surf destination having hosted the 2020 olympic surfing competition, but the waves there didn't interest me much. I had surfed Taito in 2015 and apart from the novelty of catching waves in Japan was thoroughly unimpressed.

I messaged Chris regardless, curious to see what his experience of surfing in Japan was like and accepted an offer to join him on an all-day outing just a few days after my arrival.

I was a little nervous to commit to spending a full day with a stranger. I've developed a healthy skepticism for expats over the years after meeting a wide variety of crackpots. I've met criminals actively on the run, scammers who move from country to country deploying their schemes, and just about every kind of crusty unreliable creature you can imagine.
I knew from prior experience that the Japanese expats were a unique breed. Many of them have a lust for pleasures I don't understand: anime, arcade games, and odd sexual kinks... some of these I'd go on to explore a bit deeper in between surf strike missions. Chris picked me up just after 5am in a tall boxy black van that couldn't have been more than two years old. His boards were in the back wedged between his kid's two car seats. I relaxed a bit seeing these early signs of normalcy.

Chris jumped out of the van to greet me as if I was an old friend. He had the build you'd expect from a middle-aged father but the energy of a kid. His enthusiastic smile, firm handshake, and British accent somehow made me feel like I could trust him even though I knew close to nothing about him. My guard dropped a bit more and I climbed into the passenger seat.

We wasted no time with small talk, kicking right off into conjectures about where we might find the best surf and what type of waves I could expect to find in Japan. Chris was talking at the pace of a hopeful surfer and as we drove into the rising sun, a new vision for my trip in Japan started to emerge. There were waves to be had... great waves... Chris assured me. But, as expected, they weren't easy to track down.

It was immediately clear to me that Chris held a wealth of surf knowledge. If he was a crackpot, he was an awfully smart one.

As we drove the coast he explained the Japanese surf scene from culture to forecasting with a level of detail that was too much for me to keep up with. I did my best to remember the broad strokes about coastlines and swells as he spoke about various surf breaks in detail down to the degree of swell angles.

In an effort to conserve as much brain cognition as possible, I tried to identify which chunks of information would be relevant to my stay versus what was more likely outside the realm of my current trip. When he spoke about other prefectures with names like Ibaraki, Wakayama, or Yamaguchi, I tried to take a mental note but most of it was too much for me to absorb. I latched on to the practical advice and broad strokes about forecasting.

One thing above all was clear: in Japan, you had to be on it. The surf was dictated mainly by short period wind swell that could pop up and die down on a time scale of hours, not days (I'd later learn the typhoon season was a whole other beast). This wasn't California where I could see the long range swell coming days in advance. In addition, location was critical - it could be flat on one stretch of beach but shoulder high within an hour's drive at a break facing a slightly different direction. Then the next day, or even a matter of hours later in some cases, the opposite could be true.

Just as critical, Chris dropped practical knowledge on me too: traffic, crowds, localism, board sharing programs, parking, and public showers; These were all the less-exciting but just as important details as the forecasting. After all, if I couldn't manage to get to the beach with my boards, knowing the quality of the surf wouldn't do me much good.

Only an hour into our surf outing I felt the rat re-emerging. Chris was stoking me with stories of amazing waves and low crowds. With the prospect of catching decent waves, I started re-imagining the trajectory of my stay in Japan.

We seemed to be on the same page about surfing and I was growing more and more confident that he was actually a normal and trustworthy human; but I'd been fooled before. What would happen 1-2 hours into our full day expedition when we'd covered most of the surf basics and still had 5-6 more hours in the car together? Would our conversations fall flat and drift into awkward silences? Would I learn that he was a 'Flat Earther' and have to listen to conspiracy theories the rest of the day?

I hoped for the best but prepared for the worst.

I've found myself becoming more and more particular about who I enjoy talking with as I've gotten older. Not only have I have I become more entrenched in what I like and dislike (as all old people do), but it seems like the nature of conversations in general have deteriorated in quality over the years. Personally, I like to blame the rise of Social Media - one of my favorite scape goats. It's trained us to think at the speed of an Instagram real or Facebook feed. As a result conversations are becoming shallower and faster. They're hitting too many topics too quickly, just glancing the surface like a rock being skipped across water. One skip, one topic. Fewer people seem to have the time or interest in watching the rock sink into the water and settle down to the sand, where for me, the real interesting topics lurk.

It's at these depths, beyond the basic bio and past this week's headlines where I can start to understand who the other person really is.

Are they a hustler, a chiller? A cold-blooded killer?
Do they live like a monk or think like a punk? Are they straight as an arrow or do they get down with funk? Are they hip with the vibe? Can they rise with the tide? Can they laugh at a joke? Are they overly woke?

Do they see through the game? How hard do they judge? If I make mistake, how long will they grudge?

I tested the waters by switching the topic of conversation away from surfing and was pleased to find that Chris was willing to go well beyond the surface-level talking points. We dug into the differences between Eastern and Western mindsets, discussed the societal threats from artificial intelligence, and weighed the joys and challenges of living abroad.

The three hour drive to our first surf destination passed with ease and I felt invigorated by the conversation rather than drained by the constant social interaction - a rare event for an introvert like myself.

Getting Wet The first place we surfed was a small stretch of white-sand beach on the Izu peninsula, a few hours south of Tokyo. It broke my previous conception of surf in Japan.

I held in my mind a fuzzy picture of dark sand beaches with pockets of small, weak waves, over-crowded with enthusiastic surfers. In my previous trip to Japan I had been captivated by just about everything except the surf. Chris was re-educating me on the true potential for stoke in Japan, however, and Izu was our first field trip.

The sand was white, the waters were clear, the crowd was minimal, and the backdrop was a lush green mountainside. Chris explained that the Izu Peninsula, which looks like a little thumb sticking out, downward below Tokyo, was formed by the edge of the Philippine Sea plate which butts up against the Eurasian plate. It's the only region of Japan that's part of this massive tectonic plate and it's one of the reasons why the sand is white, the cliffs are high, and there are so many onsens in the area (Japan's natural hot springs).

(Image compliments of Discover Izu)

I must have caught a hundred waves, riding a soft top Chris had thrown in the van as a back up board. It was the right call. Although small, the lappers were peaky and the extra foam under my feet carried me all the way to the beach. I was happy to be up out of the cold water and in the sun, where my old 4/3 could still keep me warm. On multiple waves I looked down through the crystal clear water to see a school of fish cruising in the wave along with me. A few Japanese locals smiled and waved at me, apparently stoked to see a Gaijin having fun at their local break.

I took a hot shower for ¥300 Yen (about $2 USD) at a the public facilities attached to the parking lot, before we headed off to lunch. Given the waning swell and the thought of adorning our cold wetsuits, we ruled out a second session, but drove to a few other breaks in the area that "Blackie", as I was now calling him by his last name, wanted to scope out. He took mental notes and relived sessions at other breaks he'd had over the years.

I was starting to see how he had come to amass so much knowledge about the coast and its surf breaks. Looking out over various reefs I grafted his descriptions of bigger swells over the flat ocean and then mind-surfed the perfectly peeling waves. It was a dangerous practice for a keen surfer but I couldn't help myself.

On the ride home I played with the idea of a summer trip to Japan, imagining what this coastline had to offer during typhoon season when larger swells would sweep across the eastern shoreline.

Dialing In The Day Trip

Blackie knew how to make the most of an outing and given the success of our first, we'd end up having multiple during my stay.

I didn't want to be a burden on him, but after the first trip, made it clear that if he had room in the van and was going to surf, I wanted to join him. Luckily for me Chris was happy to have a surf buddy to go along with him on his adventures. I gathered that most of the time he was researching and chasing waves on his own. There weren't many English speaking surfers in his area and while he spoke Japanese, it apparently wasn't good enough to get him into any close relationships with local Japanese surfers. I could relate. I didn't have mastery over any language and rarely stayed anywhere long enough to wiggle my way into the surf scene. After 10 years of consistent travel I even felt like a guest at my home break back in California. I too mostly searched for waves and surfed alone... and knew how much more stoke came from sessions with friends.

Outings with Blackie had a rare quality of zen I wasn't expecting to find. We shared an excitement to surf and an eagerness to get in the water, but carried no feeling of being rushed. Chris conveyed no FOMO about the day's surf and no stress when we hit pockets of traffic. Importantly, he set my expectations and the tone at the outset of each trip. It was always the same, "It doesn't look like the waves will be great, but we'll get out and see some of Japan along the way." Unlike most of my surf outings with friends in California, the success of the day didn't ride on scoring good waves. It helped that for me everything in Japan was still new and novel.

Blackie either picked up on this and consciously acted as a tour guide for me, or was somehow managing to still enjoy these aspects of Japan himself, despite having lived there for so long.

On our first outing we stopped for a leg stretch at a short hike leading up to a waterfall. It was a classic Japanese Zen nature experience - somehow embodying the peaceful side of nature more than any national park or city garden I've been to in any other country. Maybe it's the babbling brook with moss-covered rocks surrounded by a mixture of pine and Japanese maple trees. Or maybe it's just my mindset, primed to thinking about zen temples while in japan. Either way the affect was the same. Stress was low and gratitude high.

On another outing, to pass through the heart of Tokyo on our way to the Chiba peninsula, we took a massive bridge all the way across Tokyo Bay. In a feat of modern engineering the first half goes underwater in a submarine roadway before popping out in onto a manmade island the middle of the bay; the second half is an overwater bridge. Of course, with a level of convenience unrivaled by anywhere else I've traveled, the Japanese had a rest stop which included spotless bathrooms and a Starbucks that looked out over Tokyo bay and into the city. We had an espresso and chocolate croissant as we looked across the bay with a clear view of Mount Fuji. It could have been a tourist destination in itself, I thought.

On shorter rest stops we would hit a 7-Eleven, Lawson, or Family Mart and pick up a snack with a quick hit of caffeine. It was too easy to tickle the taste buds and keep the stomach happy with a conbini never more than a few kilometers away. Blackie introduced me to the Kari-Pan - a deep fried bun filled with curry, that soon became my favorite snack.

Lunch and dinner were not big affairs, but we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We ate conveyor belt sushi, Japanese-style burgers, and noodles in every shape, size, and broth style. Was this a food tour or a surf trip?

Back in Cali and in most places I've traveled to I always returned home from a surf mission with a mess to clean up. More often than not, my wetsuit would be sandy and smelly, I'd have salt on my face, and sand on my feet. Most Japanese didn't roll this way and Chris had adopted their style.

We were always sure to hit an onsen on the way home. On our Izu trip he took us to one that sat atop a hotel overlooking the coastal cliff-lined coast. Like many onsens, it was more than just a pool with hot water harnessed from geothermal hot springs. It was a super spa. After working up a sweat in the sauna then immediately cooling back down in a cold plunge, I sat in one of the many open-air tubs of steaming mineral water and watched the sky fade from orange to purple.

Heading home having surfed yet feeling fresh, clean, and full, I realized the joy of a surf outing should be measured more by the cumulative pleasure of the entire day and less by waves that were caught.

Even outside of the day trips Chris he helped me get waves.

I wasn't expecting to surf much at the time based on the forecast, but Blackie sent me a message the day before saying that something was developing off the coast and we could get a little bit of swell if the conditions lined up. "There might be a window at sunset where the swell is rolling in and the winds turn offshore. It's not a sure bet," he helped set my expectations, "but it's worth scoping out." I had been looking at the forecast too and didn't see anything... what had he picked up on?

I took his word for it and ventured out on my own. Chris had work and couldn't join.

He had previously helped me get setup for the best way to travel via train with my gear. I'd picked up a water tight backpack, had my board bag, and was assured it would be okay to leave my phone, shoes, clothes, and even my wallet on the beach in my board bag. We've all heard about the safety and low crime of Japan; I didn't want to test it but couldn't navigate the trains without my phone which was my map and my train pass. The idea of leaving these appendages I relied so heavily upon unattended on the beach was about as foreign to me as buying beer from a vending machine or eating fish and soup for breakfast, but like everything else I was uncomfortable with in Japan, I did it anyways.

I made it over to the Oiso station and walked the 1 km down to the beach with my board under arm and wetsuit tucked into my backpack.

Although at the outer reaches I was still within the grasp of the greater Tokyo area. It was densely populated and heavily fortified with cement. I didn't know I was at the beach until I was already on the sand which started under a two-lane highway that ran along the coast.

Passing under the giant cement structure I got my first look at the sea. To my right, a giant cement wall lined with tetrapods stretched out into the ocean. To my left the coastline stretched as far as I could see, seemingly all the way into Tokyo bay. The four-pronged interlocking cement block tetrapods lined many sections of beach protecting the highway behind me and some stretches even that bunches of them in the water. I'd come to find that these wave-busters were strategically placed all along the Eastern coastline of Japan, giving many of the beaches, including this one, an air more reminiscent of Normandy than the playground I normally treated them as.

Japan's defensive coastal setup was a practical protection against the unpredictable ocean and like much else in Japan was opposite of what I was used to. In most coastal areas I'd surfed, houses were built right up to the shoreline - everyone trying to get as close as possible to the natural beauty. In Japan, where tsunamis and typhoons are an ever-present threat, beach property is more fortified and less desirable.

Despite being at the edge of the ocean where I'm usually most comfortable, it felt dystopian.

Even the waves felt foreign. I recognized the shoulder high peaks and felt the same tinge of excitement I get every time I see fun surf, but the variety of size and consistency confused me. Waves were coming in one right after the other, seemingly from all directions. There were big waves, about shoulder high, mixed in with knee to waist high ones, all coming in with no apparent order... yet it wasn't stormy. There was a steady offshore breeze and the waves were clean. This was apparently what waves that were generated nearshore looked like. I was curious to test them out first hand in the water.

Calculating that there was only about an hour of daylight left, I started to trot down the beach. Most of the surfers were grouped together near the jetty where the shape may have been slightly better. I couldn't tell if that was true from my vantage point, but I supposed it would be better to start further down away from the crowd anyways.

Blackie had informed me this beach was mellow, but reminded me to be mindful and respectful. There were, he claimed, some highly territorial surf spots. I secretly hoped I'd get the chance to test them, as the most territorial are often the best and I was curious to see how localism played out in Japan, where everything seemed to be the opposite of what I knew back home.

No one paid any attention to me. Even though I was the only surfer who changed on the beach and the only foreigner in the water, the other surfers didn't seem to have any interest. They were probably focused on getting as many waves as they could from the swell that would only last a few hours.

I caught a few waves and found they were weak but still fun. I'd made the right choice to take out my fish, which gave me good speed off the takeoff and helped me get through some of the fat parts when the wave backed off. Most turns were soft. Most waves were cruisey. But some of the bigger ones that popped up amongst the flurry would surprise me with a bit more juice. I caught a few lucky ones and found myself starting to get stoked.

I was smiling to myself and enjoying the novelty of surfing an odd swell in a foreign land. I folded into the lineup at the outskirts of the break, trading off waves with a Japanese surfer who had long hair and a retro single fin. After a few waves he introduced himself in English and asked where I was from.

His name was Take. He had lived in Florida for a few years, which explained his English fluency. He had a Chilean wife and spoke Spanish too. "Well..." I thought to myself, "I didn't think this experience could get any more interesting."

I was wrong.

I asked Take about surfing in the area - today's surf was above average and a nice surprise he told me. I asked what I should say when I was in position for a wave but wanted to let another surfer know they could take it. In English I'd say, "Go ahead" or "I'm not going" or "This one's yours".

"Uh, I don't know" he said, "People don't typically do that around here." he laughed.

He seemed to be as curious about me as I was about him. He was an anomaly in Japan, even amongst the surfers. He had lived outside Japan, married a foreigner, and apparently didn't have any reservations about talking with foreigners.

He had spotted me as an anomaly amongst tourists. I was a foreigner surfing in a suburb about an hour outside of Tokyo. Most tourists didn't venture this far from Tokyo and even the surfers who did, mostly stuck to the surf hubs like Chiba and Miyazaki.

I helped confirm his initial suspicion; I was staying with a local Japanese the next town over and I had come to Oiso via train. He laughed when he heard that I changed on the beach and left everything there with my board bag.

Toward the end of the session Take insisted that he give me a ride home. I declined the offer twice, not wanting to make him drive out of his way just to show some hospitality, but he insisted. Out of fear I'd disrespect him by declining his third offer, I accepted. When the sun went down and it became too dark to see, we caught our last waves in and walked up to his car together.

Take had a stripped-down Honda civic from the mid 90's. He had added board racks on top, but everything inside had been ripped out - the back seats, some of the paneling, even the floor mats - presumably to reduce weight. The two front seats were custom racing style with the slender body and high head rest like you'd see in a car racing game at an arcade. The stick shift was an after-stock white cue ball.

I changed back into my jeans and shirt, then stuffed my wetsuit in the dry bag. Take pulled is wetsuit half down, threw on a sweater, and wrapped a towel around his waist.

After securing our boards on the racks, he lit up a cigarette as he stepped into the driver seat, signaling for me to get in on the other side. Inside the car I felt like I was in a scene out of Tokyo Drift and hoped maybe we'd get into an ad-hoc race on the way back, but the traffic didn't allow for it.

Future Plans I'd go on to rent my own car with a buddy from back home and have several more fun surf sessions... as well as some wild, weird, and wonderful adventures outside the water.

As I left Japan for my next adventure, I considered my first few weeks there to have been a great success, especially considering it was the off season. Blackie had played a big hand in that. I can easily imagine another scenario where I flounder around trying to find surf breaks, get skunked, and experience only a fraction of the cool things he had shown me given his 10 years of experience and vehicle access. In that case I'd likely write off Japan for another ten years.

Instead, I thought seriously about returning for the summer typhoon season to see just how good the Japan surf scene really could be...

And that's where we'll pick up next week, when I return to Japan at the beginning of the typhoon season and venture into the unknown via a rented van in the south of Japan.