Drive Thru Kyoto!

good evening. first, my softbank mail service is acting up so i can’t post blogs from my cel. phone. or sometimes it just posts them all at once. weird? anyway, it’s day 4 of day 6 and it seems like day 100 or something. so many things have been happening that i can’t keep up.

our dinner 2 nights ago at ushio’s in wakayama was pretty awesome. to be able to eat the fish you caught earlier in the day is pretty cool. and the oysters were the best! milky wakayama huge oysters!!! thanks master!!!
we kicked off early in the morning to have a fun day in osaka. the excitement was just crazy. from surfing endless waves in the river, to eating the best kushikatsu in the world, to almost having my finger cut off by angry yakuza’s, to the drive to kyoto, was just pure excitement. it was a day i will never forget, and i think everybody else who was there thinks the same way.

taizo harada has been a friend of mine since i first came to japan. we went on many trips in japan together and have some pretty crazy and funny stories along the way. he was our osaka surf guide for the day and none of us were let down….

our captains name was sato-san. he is my hero! why? don’t ask. just let me say this. “if sato-san wasn’t our car driver in osaka, i would be less one camera, and one less finger. i’ll leave it at that….

if i ever live in japan, i’m going to have a room like this. when i’m in a chair, i feel like a samurai. and it feels dam good! happy times in wakayama! thanks to yamari and the kimura-san family!!

i’ve knew kinsan for 20 years and i’ve never ever seen him stand up on a surfboard. yesterday was history in the surfing culture! kinsan surfing!!! i was stoked and i think he was too, just look at his face. haha… wait till you see the video we have. haha…

good morning. there are only a handful of surf sessions i can remember. the day at shotgun in chiba is one of them. it was one of those days when i thought to myself “i can die today.” the waves weren’t only big, they were THICK!!! it was like the whole bay dumping on your head… scary? yes. dangerous? yes….

i take off and two things are on my mind. one, go straight and die. or two, try to pull in the barrel and hope for the best. see that white water coming in from over the wave? i knew it was coming for me in a matter of time….

i pull in and did the right thing. do you notice how thick that wave is? if i went straight, the impact of the wave could have ripped my body into pieces….

faces of death? this is what you call “wave in a wave in a wave” or “three waves in one.” i was more on the right side of this photo when this freak set came in. or better known as “the impact zone.” you can’t see me because i was under water fighting for my life. my board broke, my leash broke, and my heart almost broke. i’ll never forget the prayers i was saying under water. i thought it was the end…..

all these photo of shotgun were in surf1st magazine and photos taken by kinsan. jun jo is on the cover on the biggest wave ever ridden in japan. same swell, same day, and same time. jun and i were emailing back and forth from the start of this typhoon. we were both in hawaii and took flights to 2 different places to surf that typhoon. we knew it was going to be big, but i don’t think neither of us knew it was going to be that big. people call it the 100 year swell. i call it, the 1000 year swell. i don’t think it will happen again but if it does, i’m sure jun and i will be emailing each other again…. wow, i’m getting excited!!! where are the typhoons????