Apparently, this is a very popular wall of signs for tourists.  I followed the crowd and snapped this picture.

Looks like a certain somewhat famous tower in Tokyo, doesn’t it?

A view of Mt. Fuji from afar.

This is just behind the university.  I walked about 5 minutes down the beach and took these pictures of Mt. Fuji:

A rare appearance by Mr. Fuji – minus the layer of snow.  I guess that there will be snow there in the next month or so.  This is my first year in Shizuoka so that is mere speculation on my part.

I finished class at 12:10 and arrived at the beach just before 2:00.  I had no idea what to expect because I have never been there in the afternoon yet…

Wow.  One surfer.  Next stop, Shizunami.

A little blurry – but you get the picture.  No pun intended.

Here are a couple more pictures:

It was a refreshing change go surfing in the afternoon – I will have to try it again.  Perhaps Friday??

The big question is – Would the waves be as nice as yesterday’s?

These pictures were taken at 5:40 am:

Not as nice as yesterday, but certainly workable.  The waves were quite good and I caught quite a few waves in the first hour or so.  Like usual, the wind picked up and the quality of the waves went down.  I got some advice from Mr. T about how I can improve my surfing.  Even though the waves weren’t optimal, I continue to practice until almost 10 am – my longest session at Yoshida so far.  Looking forward to tomorrow’s session (my last session before my week-long conference in Germany).

For some reason, I think it is good luck to be able to see Mt. Fuji before going to the beach…

A lot of people seem to have Wednesdays off, so I wasn’t surprised to see around 20 cars in the parking lot before 6:00 am.  Here’s what the waves looked like:

A beautiful day for surfing and / or fishing.  Look again at the top picture – quite a few fishing boats out there!

We took a break around 8:30 and I snapped this shot of Mr. T, a friendly local, in action:

In case you are wondering, it’s not this Mr. T:

It would be interesting to see this Mr. T surf.  I pity the fool that snakes Mr. T’s wave!

Anyways, I had a productive session today.  Caught a fair number of waves and practiced my takeoffs.

On the road around 7:30 am, I snapped this photo:

Not particularly impressive, but by the time I was close enough to take a better picture, it was covered by clouds.

I knew that the waves probably wouldn’t be very good, but at least it wasn’t raining!

When I arrived at the beach at 6:30, I saw 8 people surfing, 1 surfer carrying a surfboard and 1 smoker / wave watcher.  It was a pretty typical weekday at Kashima.

The waves were not amazing, but at least they were surfable – a refreshing change from the past few sessions.

If you look closely, actually not that closely, you can see quite a few fishing boats.  I don’t know if it was my imagination or not, but I swear I could smell diesel fumes!

I forgot to mention it in my post about June 18th so I will mention it now.  Last week we saw a solitary jellyfish.  One jellyfish isn’t much to worry about but I certainly don’t want to experience my first jellyfish sting.  When it happens, I’m sure I will be posting of a badly swollen arm or leg!

Here’s a picture showing the lack of progress on the beach houses at Shizunami.

In the foreground you can see my powerful “NO Value Star” computer. In case you are wondering, I didn’t write that – it was like that when I got it. I then decided to get a better picture from outside…

This picture was taken on the ramp between the 2nd and 3rd floors.

Fewer obstructions, and a much better picture of Mt. Fuji.

Feeling inspired and energetic, I walked down to the beach, hoping to get some nice pictures of the waves.

About 500 meters down the beach, I found these 2 surfers catching a few waves. I had a sneaky suspicion that there were surfable waves here when the conditions were right. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my board in the van today – the bag was starting to smell ripe so it’s in the apartment now.

I continued to walk down the beach and snapped this shot of Mt. Fuji and the surf.

Looking forward to tomorrow and catching the end of Typhoon No. 4!

This is the view this morning from our stairwell.  Click the picture to see it better.