The websites at several of the local shops predicted monster waves – would they be correct?!?

First stop – Yoshida!

Believe it or not, but there were two “challengers” out there trying to surf.  Craziness!

Next stop – the rarely visited Sagara…

Difficult to believe that Sagara is only about 10 minutes away.

A lot more surfers and a LOT better waves.

Notice Mt. Fuji in the background.  It was fun – but a little bit crowded for my liking.

We drove for about 5 minutes to Sagara, an industrial seaport.  I had been there before, but I had never surfed there before.  I was put off by the rather large, rather official-looking sign in Japanese with “No Surfing” “No Jet skiing” “Danger” and some other things that I couldn’t read.  (The sign is quite faded and has some difficult kanjis).

When we arrived, there was a solitary longboarder in the water.  However, it didn’t look as menacing as Kashima.  The wind was still strong and it was still raining quite heavy.  We quickly got in the water and enjoying ourselves.

I am quite lucky about weather.  The rain stopped and sun tried to make an appearance.  Here are a few pictures that I took at around 10 am.  I wanted to take a picture of the sign but it was blocked by a couple of vans.

When I visited this point before, it was completely flat – barely a ripple.  Apparently, this point only has waves when there is a typhoon swell.  Of course, the locals know this well and when we were leaving, there were about 30 or so surfers and a bodyboarder in the water.

A nice morning at the beach!