good morning. it’s 5am here in shikoku. there still seems to be some south swell coming into uchizuma. the tides too high now so it isn’t breaking but there are some swells rolling in. been having a great time here. mike woo’s here, and hayato came yesterday so we did what we love to do. dive….. check out these photos from yesterday….

mike and i had our spears from hawaii. hayato left his in chiba so we went the the home center and he bought this japanese spear for $4. it looked like a little toy and we were laughing. hayato actually speared a fish with this. whatever works….

when you have good diving partners, your going to catch something. we caught more than something. before we left, yasan was talking about a barbecue so the pressure was on. none of us wanted to come back empty handed, and none of us did. not bad for 2 hours of diving….

this is called “black awabi” in japanese. when we came back to the car, there were 3 of them that crawled into our cooler. we still don’t know how it got there???

we went to morimoto-san’s restaurant in kaifu and he prepared our catch. we took the cooler into the kitchen and he brought this out 15 minutes later. i freaked out when i saw this. it would take about 2 months rent to pay for something like this in tokyo. gosh, i swear this was the best dinner ever. imagine that this fish were alive just a few hours earlier. as fresh as it gets…

this is erina taniguchi. gosh, i’ve know her since she was 14 years old or so. erina is one of the nicest girls you will ever meet. everybody gets along and likes erina. she is also number 1 in the jpsa womens pro rankings now. if you seen her surf, you will know why. she was out the other day surfing with us and i seen her get some nice barrels. anyway, this could be erina’s year. ganbatte ne…

this is the morimoto-san crew. these people are so nice, the food is awesome, and i always have a great time there. thanks for all the years of the great food….

wow, i just figured out how to take clips off some old videos i have. from now on, your going to see things from the past 15 years in japan. everywhere i use to go, i took my video camera with me. got some classic footage. stay tuned….

1992 was the first time i came to shikoku. tokura-san brought me here and that’s when i met barrels owner, ishino-san. we pulled up to this river mouth and nobody was out. the waves were freaking going off. i grabbed my board and was surfing out there by myself for an hour. ishino-san grabbed my video camera and took some footage. 1 guy surfing a perfect barreling river mouth by himself is unheard of. that was the first and probably the last time i will experience something like that…..

after coming out of the barrel, you have so much speed that you can do what ever the heck you want. i was riding for local motion back then and i was riding a 6’4 wade tokoro. i remember that because i broke it right after this wave. i almost cried..

this was 2 days ago. i guess i can say i’ve been surfing here for the past 15 years. i’m not a local, i’m just a lucky ass guy with friends that know what’s up. thanks to all who have made my dream come true….[:????????$B!r(B:]

good morning. 7:30am here in uchizuma. seems like the south swell is still going but it’s come down a bit. i’m going to relax today. maybe jump in the water for a snorkel later. gosh, shikoku is so beautiful. japan paradise…. have a beautiful day….[:??????:]

here is akayan-san and matchi talking story after a surf. we were sitting here for 30 minutes and my body started to overheat. it was 100 degrees and burning hot. i needed to get some water so i was out of there. gosh, i must be drinking about three 2L bottles of water a day. at $2/each, that’s $6/day. so my water bill in japan comes out to $180/month. you people back in hawaii better appreciate the clean fresh free tap water….

this was my long drive back home yesterday. i had my ipod on listening to kalapana and singing karaoke in the car. haha. it was such a happy drive back home. i guess any drive back home is happy when you score epic waves….

this guy was flying on his bike following this car. if the car was to slam the breaks, the bicycle guy is history….

ok, i’ve drove down this road over 100 times with matchi. every single time, he tells me about seeing monkeys here. i don’t believe him because i’ve never seen them for myself. and i think he knows i don’t believe him. anyway, on the way back the other day, i was in a deep sleep in the passenger seat of his car. all of a sudden, matchi yells out loud “kirby, kirby” and slams his breaks. he scared the shit out of me. i thought we were going to get into an accident or something. i almost had a freakin heart attack. he stopped in the middle of the road and said “look, monkeys”…. my heart was pumping so fast but my mind was still asleep. there were 2 monkeys running in the middle of road. was it a dream???? no, it was real. after that, it took a while for my heart beat to go back to normal. thanks matchi for showing me the monkeys. now i believe you…. but next time, don’t freak me out again… i’m getting too old for that…. haha….