It has been quite some time since a typhoon passed close enough to make some waves in the Shizuoka area. Here’s what the wave forecast looked like for east Japan this morning:
Even without knowing exactly where we live, you can see that most of eastern Japan was expecting some larger than average waves.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Typhoon #5 passed Shizuoka. While walking to the car after my afternoon class finished, I could hear the waves breaking. (On normal days, you can’t hear the waves). I knew that a few surfers go out when there is a typhoon swell, so I decided to check it out. Parked on the road was a small van with some surf stickers on the back window. Also, there were two pairs of sandals underneath the van, a telltale sign that the people were either surfing or bodyboarding. As expected, there were two guys in the water. I suspect that they were the same two people I had seen before.
The waves were much bigger than Typhoon #4 and the wind was still quite strong - not that tempting for a novice such as myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me and couldn’t take any pictures. I watched them for around 10 minutes and only saw one of them catch a wave. I did one of them take a nice tumble head over heels though.
Even though I had my gear in the car, I decided against going out. I knew that I’d be going out the next day at Kashima, my new home point.
Typhoon Number 4 is on the way, it rained quite heavily last night and was raining this morning when I arrived at work. By the time my first class finished, the rain had stopped and the sun came out. Here is a picture of Mt. Fuji from my desk.
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…
I was game for trying a new point, so I put on a T-shirt and jumped in the car. (I must have looked ridiculous - I was half-wearing a wetsuit and a T-shirt). There was no way I was going to bother taking off my wetsuit and then put it back on in a few minutes. For those of you who have had the fortune / misfortune of wearing a wetsuit will quickly agree with me.
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!
Like usual, the forecast was for rain. When I rolled out of bed at 5:30 am, it was raining. It don’t look like it was raining too hard so I got ready. When I went outside, it was raining hard enough that I got an umbrella and was having second thoughts about going. These thoughts quickly passed - I knew that this was my chance to catch the end of a passing typhoon, so I was certainly going.
An hour later, I was in the parking lot at my unofficial new local point, Kashima. Here’s what I saw:
You can’t really tell from the pictures, but the waves were quite big. I guess that it was overhead or maybe even bigger. Not too many people were in the water, but I thought I would go out for a paddle and try to catch a wave or two. My friend hadn’t shown up yet, but I was going out anyways.
I had my wetsuit half-way on when my friend arrived. He suggested that we try a different point just down the road…
