good morning. 5am tuesday morning. pitch dark outside but can feel it. no winds, south swell, i’m guessing 3-4′ with epic conditions. getting a little excited. i’m out of here… have a nice day…

surfed diamond head yesterday morning with shuji, jun, and hayato. we had lighthouse to ourselves for a while… surf, surf, surf!!!

went up to nuuanu to do some yard work yesterday in the raging hot sun. we got such a huge yard along the stream and the weeds get out of control in no time. cutting weeds with a weed whacker sucks. but somebody has to do it…. this is the before shot…

and this is the after shot. i cut the grass by myself and almost passed out because of the heat. ice cold water tasted like gold after that….

i forgot to wear long pants so by the time i was done, my legs were bleeding all over from the little rocks flying around. every minute, i was yelling “ouch, itai, ouch, itai”…. my legs are trashed. good thing i’m not a girl cause it doesn’t look good at all….
**surfline did a great job on researching airline surfboard charges. check out the prices of some airlines… oh, with my experiences, it’s not the airline, it’s the person at the counter. yeah, it matters. my advise is, “be nice”. sometimes you get a break, and sometimes you don’t. i know some japanese surfers that pay $2,100 for their board bag from japan to hawaii. that must suck….
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good evening. check out more photos from the grom contest this past weekend.. gallery coming up soon on GO-NAMINORI.COM so check back….

a lot of the groms were looking for the barrel out at queen’s. starting young…

this photo looks like bowls, rocky point, or even small pipe. but believe it or not, this is queen’s left….

tony moniz is in waikiki everyday teaching people from around the world how to surf. look at these happy beginners..

kainoa mcgee paddled out and caught a few waves while the groms were getting cleaned up…

ok, this is a head dip. the lip ended up going over this kids head and was he stoked? shit yeah!!! a barrel is a barrel….

good morning. 6am on this beautiful monday morning. had a great weekend? hope so. i went to the rokkasho rhaposdy event yesterday and wow!!! what an eye opener. learned a lot about the nuclear plant in aomori and i left feeling a little down. i felt sorry for the japanese people that protested the project because it was like nobody was listening to them. could that happen here in hawaii? i hope not. but it’s scary just thinking about it. i can go on and on right now about this topic but will come back to it later. just wanted to thank ryo kubota and surdfrider foundation for getting the word out. and thanks ryo for the tshirt and avocados. see you in the water…
oh yeah, the waves. ummm, looking small but looking fun. chest/shoulder high in town with a lot of surfers out. light winds and this swell supposed to linger all week until a bigger swell hits around the 20th. heading to the airport to pick up a famous japanese pig hunter…

news out of bali. ketut “mega” semadhi is the first balinese surfer to win the billabong pro junior. it happened yesterday at kuta reef in bali. how sick is that? garut winning last week, now mega winning this week. the two hottest groms out of bali are living up their expectations… i’m so stoked for them….

if you don’t know who mega is. he’s the grom out of dreamland that boosts the biggest airs. the first time he came to hawaii and stayed with me, i took him and garut out to bowls. they were 15 years old at the time and they were turning heads. well, until mega stepped on vana and had 20 break off in his foot. he went in pretty worried. why? because there’s no vana in bali so he didn’t know what the heck was in his feet hurting so much… that was pretty funny…