Ukumillion.com

Not a good day for surfing – heavy rain with a bit of thunder and lightning mixed in.  Apparently, it was good for fishing though…

It’s a little bit blurry because of the rain, but all of the spots on the horizon are fishing boats!!

Today was a day of many number ones.  Of course, it is the 11th day of the first month – making 3 ones.  It was my surf outing of 2009 and it was also my first time to wear my new wetsuit.

It was the first time for me to wear my gloves and boots as well.  Lots of “ones” don’t you agree?

Like usual, the first stop was Yoshida:

Not great.  However, I wasn’t really expecting it to be good.  Shizunami and Kashima were also flat.  The fourth and final stop was Katahama…

(more…)

Since my 3mm fullsuit isn’t suitable for winter surfing, I have been on the lookout for a new suit.  I didn’t want to order a custom suit because of the price and I wasn’t confident about how many times I’d actually use it per season.  (The locals have told me that the surfing isn’t very consistent during the winter months of January, February and early March).

One morning while surfing the web for information about surfing in Ontario, I came across a sports shop in Toronto that was having a clearance sale on wetsuits.  I found this suit:

It’s a Ripcurl 6/5/4 F-Bomb wetsuit.  The regular price is around $400 US (36,000 yen) but it was on sale for $269 CDN (20,000 yen).   Here is some semi-technical information about the suit:

Hopefully, I will be able to try it out soon.  (I haven’t been surfing since December 17th).

When I was back in Port Hope, I was interviewed by one of the local newspapers, the Northumberland News.  Click here to read the short article.

Are you looking for a scaffold contpuctor?  What exactly is a contpuctor?  If you need one, give YAMASUGI a call!

After breaking one of my fins a couple of weeks ago (the right one to be exact), I have been using even older fins from another board.   I thought about buying one replacement fin, but the cost was at least 3,000 yen.  A whole set of much better fins cost 10,000 yen.

Initial impression?  Fast!

Since I knew that people would ask me about the food in Germany, I decided to take a few snapshots of the food I ate during my week in Essen, Germany.  I’m sure that this isn’t considered gourmet, but these are a few things that I ate during the week.

(more…)

As you have probably noticed, I haven’t been posting about surfing for the last week and a half.  That’s because I was attending an international linguistics conference.  The name of the conference was AILA 2008.

It was a quite large conference that was held in Essen, Germany from August 24th – 29th.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Germany, here’s a handy map:

The closest international airports are Frankfurt and Dosseldorf.  (I actually flew from Nagoya to Frankfurt and then took a 45-minute or so flight from Frankfurt to Dosseldorf).

On the Victoria Day weekend, I toured the HMCS Ottawa. She is a Canadian frigate based in Esquimalt, British Columbia. She is now touring around Asia and the South Pacific on a 6-month voyage. She is over 130 meters long and the top speed is around 50 km/h (30 knots). She carries a crew of 225 people – 205 are men and 20 are women. Here is a picture of her at sea. (Obviously, I did not take this picture).

(more…)

Did you see this picture in the news this week?

A boy in Moriyama found this two-headed turtle in the playground at his school. The turtle’s name is Treasure – Takara in Japanese. Researchers say that this　wasn’t caused by pollution. I’m not sure what to think about this. What do you think – is this natural or unnatural?