Here’s a screen shot of my interview on Fuji TV a few weeks ago.  I think they talked to me for about 10 minutes to make a 4-second clip.  Haha

For those of you that don’t read Japanese, I was commenting about how difficult it looks to fold the book covers that the bookstores give customers.

I planned to meet at 6:30 at Yoshida but when I arrived, there was only 1 person there and he wasn’t getting ready to surf… Oh.

After taking a peek, I understood why. We then checked out Shizunami – it was a little better with about 20 or do surfers along the length of the beach.

Where was everyone? Katahama? Omaezaki?

Since it was a beautiful day, we decided to drive the extra 30 minutes of so to check omaezaki and here’s what we saw:

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

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…

Here’s what Katahama looked like:

Not much better than the other points, but at least there were some waves.  Lots of cars were in the parking lot and a few surfers were in the water.  I guess most people were waiting for the tide to rise.

Here are a couple more shots I took after I finished my session:

When I got home, I checked the Internet surf reports about Katahama.  They reported that at 9:30 there were 45 surfers in the water and the wave was given a rating of 20 points.  At 12:30, they reported 60 surfers in the water.  It’s a good thing that I went early today!

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!

Initial impression?  Fast!

The conference was quite large and it was held at two venues – a university and a convention centre.  As one can imagine, food was expensive at the convention centre.  I spent the first two days at the university and ate at the cafeteria – the same thing both days.  Because I can’t read German, I thought I would choose something that I could see what it actually was!  Here’s what I ate:

Quite good (at least compared to my university’s cafeteria).  The sandwich was 2 euro, but the sparkling water was 1.80 euro.  I was surprised that the water was almost as expensive as the sandwich!

We visited a botanical garden near the convention centre.  There was a cafe with an outdoor patio area.  First they gave us a German menu so we asked for an English menu.  The waitress came back a few minutes later and gave us back the same German menus!  Not a good sign.  Anyways, we decided to order anyways.  This item caught my eye:

Of course I don’t read German, so I really had no idea what I was ordering.  I had the feeling that pfifferlingen was mushroom and rostkartoffeln was something baked / roasted.  Sounds good.  The waitress confirmed that it was mushroom but that was the limit of her English.  Here’s what came…

Eggs and cheese with baked potatoes and bacon.  Not a bad dish at all!

My last meal in Germany (in Dusseldorf airport) was this turkey focaccia…

Overpriced, but quite delicious!

Can’t write about German cuisine without mentioning the national beverage, so here’s a picture of me enjoying it!

It was quite fruity – apparently the Germans like fruity beers in the summer.  Not me.