Kimura-san 71 Birthday Party:  Dancing and Singing on the White Sandy Beach of Bali.  Photo by Matsukawa.

Good morning 3:30am.
Ala Moana waist high and good.
Diamond Head chest high and good.
Light winds so nice morning conditions.
Sunny and warm.
Going to the sea.
Have a wonderful day!

Packing to come home takes time.  Where you position your boards has to be well thought out.  You’re limited to 50lbs on Hawaiian Airlines and if you go over the weight, you will be charged a lot.  The key is to bring a hand held scale to prevent surprises at the airport.  By the way, one board bag up to 50lbs cost $150 from Hawaii to Japan, and 15,000 yen or $100 from Japan to Hawaii.  Four surfboards in one bag usually works.  

Had a last night dinner with my Wakayama family.  The first time I met Kimura-san, there were only 4 members in his family.  Now, there are 10!  Well, if you add me, that’s 11.  Haha.  So cool to see the family growing and growing!  

I was pretty excited to head back to Hawaii.  This was one of my longest trip ever.  Almost a month living out of a suitcase makes me realize how simple we can live.  As long as I have my magic boards, I could live forever out of a suitcase.

Eight flights, 6 airports, and almost 90 hours of travel time, I’m ready to sleep on my own bed.  As soon as I boarded my flight, I fell asleep and slept all the way back to Hawaii.  

First thing when I got home, I cooked rice and made me a “high tide” Yamari bowl.  Now it’s time to burn off all the calories and plan our next trip.  I can’t wait to get back in the blue ocean!

For this trip, Indonesia was the main focus for surfing.  I just thought that we’d be lucky if Japan had surf too.  Because Japan is so fickle when it comes to waves, you have to think like that.  If you score in Indonesia, it’s normal.  But in Japan, luck is a big factor.  And since it’s my brothers first surf trip to Japan, we were extremely lucky!  Surfing this spot with just a few other locals was pretty awesome.  And seeing my brother surf again was even more awesome.  

When I was in High School, Mason was one of the best surfers in our school.  He was the first guy I actually seen getting barreled.  I still have that moment pictured in my mind and ever since then, I wanted the same.  Now he surfs once in every 10 years and is locked into the 80’s surfer style, which looks cool.

Back to Sumbawa.  Tokura-san and I got to see first hand the waves we surfed together 30 years ago.  It was like completing the full circle and now we can move on to more exploring.  We got to see it with our own eyes our feelings are mixed.  I’ll explain that a little later.  

The waves were huge so the lineups were empty.  That’s exactly what I live for.  High risk and higher reward!