good morning. it’s 8:30am here on another wet raining day in cloud 9. the waves came down but are still in the head high range with perfect conditions. good for surfing but not good for photos. it’s kind of hard to get a full sunny day here and i’m starting to stress out because i’m only here for a couple more days. please sun come out!!! last night was nuts. we went to dinner at this bar down the road. around 9pm, there was a black out. no electricity. so they lit up a couple of candles and the party went on. i figured out why i love this place. yeah, the waves are epic. but the main reason is because of the people here. the local people are soooo nice and kind. really helpful and always trying to make us happy. we got to the bar on bikes because there are no cars here. then it started to rain super hard all night. we were stading in front ready to leave and the locals were trying their best to get us back to our room dry. then one guy, probably the only guy with a car on the island, gave us a ride back. and he lives in the opposite direction. he was super cool….. anyway, going to go outside and talk to mr. sun. “please come out”. i’ll yell 3 times and if it doesn’t work, i’m going back to sleep. see ya…
**here is my blog from last night.
good evening from cloud 9. gosh, the waves were going off again today. perfect 4′ barrels all day long. some good surfing went down. they awards party is this saturday night so you have to wait. i remember going to the awards party 4 years ago. it was so fun. there must have been 10,000 people there in this one area. standing room only. there was live music, dancing, food, drinks, and even a wet t-shirt contest. nah, just kidding. but this is the biggest event for this place and everybody comes out to celebrate.
there’s something magical about this contest. there was no typhoon or anything but we had solid surf for the past 3 days. amazing.

back to food poisoning. i went to the tower and seen this aussie hanging over the railing throwing up before his heat. gosh, i knew exactly how he was feeling. i wanted to give him a pat on the back. i felt so sorry for him….

there were 2 caddy’s in the contest. one for hawaiian stephen kohone, and one for japanese shinpei horiguchi. this kid was so stoked to be shinpei’s caddy. he kept on smiling and kept on telling me that shimpei was wearing the blue jersey…. shinpei’s number one fan…..

mikala jones getting ready for his heat while makua rothman scoping out the lineup. these guys were looking pretty serious. mikala and some of the hawaiian team is staying next door to us so it’s cool to have them right here. lot’s to talk about….
**anyway, going out to dinner now. be back tomorrow. the doctor told me not to drink milk or eat anything that contains milk in it. so i ate a creamy pumpkin soup for lunch, and a whole coconut for a snack. bad. very bad… and not to mention the barbecue we at last night. shit, i got to go to the toilet….

what’s up everybody. the contest is going to wrap up today. gosh, the past 3 days have been epic!!! 4-6′ and perfect perfect barrels barrels. yes, yes. the only bummer is the weather has been cloudy and raining. not good for photos but good for surf. i lost in my heat last night but i’m still happy. got to surf perfect cloud 9 three times for 25min with only a couple other guys out. i’m going to watch the final so give you the results tomorrow. see ya.
*as for my stomach, it feels much better but i’m still a little weak. about 8 other competitors got food poisoning too. i saw this australian guy throwing up before his heat and he had a hard time walking down the stairs for his heat. gosh, i know that feeling. it’s the worst feeling in the world. anyway, hope everybody gets better soon….

the other day, hayato and i were walking back to our place when these 2 kids came up to us. one of them said “give me money”. gosh, they must have been only 5 or 6 years old. hayato gave them some candy and they were off. then i saw one of the kids again and he asked me for my surfboard. gosh. i just don’t know what to say….

you want to make good use out of your empty coke bottles? fill it up with gas and sell it. that’s pretty dam smart…..

aloha, got up this morning and felt a lot better. my body still feels poisoned but i can actually walk today. my heat was one of the last heats before they stopped the contest due to low tide. low tide here is crazy shallow. no water at all. the waves are still barreling but if you eat it, you will hit for sure. it was round 2 four man heats. the heats were 25 minutes so plenty of time to get 2 scoring waves. i got a couple of barrels over the dry reef and luckily made them. got 1st and will head to round 3 this evening or tomorrow morning. as for the weather? it sucked. it was raining and cloudy all day. but that made for epic glassy conditions. oh, and last night was a trip. thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. and not to mention a couple of earthquakes. the lightning was coming down right outside our window. the thunder was rattling the windows too, and the earthquake was shaking my bed. after that, i couldn’t sleep. all i was thinking was “tsunami”. and if there was one, we would all find out by getting a big wave over us. we are staying right on the beach and there are no emergency systems here. it was kind of freaky but i got through the night was was happy to wake up this morning…..

we’ve been eating out every night. except for the time i got food poisoning, everything was really good. this night, we ate at this barbecue place about 10 minutes away. it was so good. here’s tokura-san and hayato drinking a cold one. well, not that cold….

we were all ready to board the plane in cebu when we forgot something. jacksan. it was 2:15 and our flight was leaving at 2:30. i ran out of the airport and looked for a duty free. found him, and came back in time. this island we’re at has none so that was big. we stuck a bottled water into the freezer to make ice, cut up 3 plastic water bottles, and had a jack kind of night….

this is kazuya, hayato, and uske eating breakfast at a place down the street called “101”. i ate there today and it was actually really good. i had a spaghetti with meat sauce. it was pretty good…..

this is the place where i got sick. looks good but i guess any kind of contaminated meat will look good after being cooked. sorry, but i could never eat there again. but hayato and tokura-san still go there for dinner…. yikes.