Dubious Adventures

So I’m back. I’m sitting at my newly internet-ready laptop in my apartment, still sore from last weekend’s festivities. As I wrote on Friday, I took a few hours of vacation time in order to get down to Akashi to meet up with some other JETs. We met up with about 25 or so, and then we all split up. We headed down to the island of Shikoku in three vans so that we could enjoy some water-related activities over the weekend. Two vans went their own way to do some white-water rafting and canyoning, and my van headed to the beach for a weekend of surfing.

At first our intrepid leader, Fiona, called on me to navigate our van-fellowship of 9 down to the island of Awaji, our first stop. There we were to pick up another JET and continue on our way. We made it to the ferry and rode to Awaji with the rest of the JETs, and then continued on our merry way. Our van was like a cross between KITT from Knight Rider and the A-Team van, so we didn’t mind when we ended up lost on Awaji and asking directions at convenience stores every 10 minutes. That’s what happens when you put a person who gets lost in his own apartment in the navigator’s seat and a woman who hadn’t been behind the wheel in 3 years in the driver’s seat (I kid, Fiona!) We eventually met up with Micah, who took over navigator duties while I headed to the back to continue my brief but intense education in American hip-hop and rap from the past 5 years. I learned a lot about being a ********************* PIMP.

We got up at 8 and headed next door to Da Hawaiin Kitchen, Ten’s own burger joint. Breakfast was toast, eggs, salad and either sausage or avocado with coffee. Not bad for being included in our $30 per night room charge. Afterwards we headed toward the beach to get our boards and meet up with our instructors. I think this is a good time to point out that for a simple country boy from Oklahoma, the mere act of seeing the ocean was at times enough to inspire pants-wetting fear. But I worked through it and joined the others on the beach, where I was soon sloughing towards the largest body of water on the planet with only a surf board for protection. Well, that and the 8 layers of jellyfish repellent that I slathered on before heading in.

The 10 of us took some lessons, with a few having surfed before, and before too long we started to get the hang of it for the most part. The weather was nice, for the most part, with a smattering of rain breaking up the blue skies, but the water was nice and warm the whole time. I am assured that it was the warmest ocean water that any of my fellow surfers had ever been in. We surfed on and off for a while, with about half of us heading back to eat some lunch and more importantly, put on rash guards. You see, those fancy clothes that surfers are always wearing in movies (like Blue Crush) are not just for looking awesome, as I had been led to believe. Oh, no. Apparently the board wax that is used to keep your feet from slipping every time you stand up also has a taste for torso flesh. Yet another thing that could have been brought to my attention BEFORE WE STARTED! Well, my board wax had its thirst slaked that morning before my quick change, let me tell you.

After we surfed ourselves into exhaustion we all changed clothes and headed up to the next beach for a Hawaiin party that Ten had organized for us! We met up with some JETs from the area, as well as some locals. About 8 bands, including many Hawaiins living in Osaka or other areas were there, as were quite a few hula dancers. We had some drinks, some delicous Hawaiin food, and listened to some great music for about 4 hours. Eventually we headed back to our guesthouse, and slept the sleep of the physically exhausted. Let me tell you, that felt great. I have been mentally tired almost every day since arriving here in Japan, but I haven’t felt exhausted like that for a while, and I liked it.

The next morning we headed up the road to a restaurant owned by a friend of Ten’s. I once again thanked my lucky stars for having been in Japan before, because I learned this priceless piece of information last time I was here: Japanese people are very, very good at preparing a Japanese breakfast, and very, very bad at preparing a “Western” one. Heather and I were the only people to order Japanese-style, and we got rice, fish, pickles, salad, miso soup, tofu, and seaweed. The others got undercooked eggs, cheese toast, and a slightly bigger salad. Heather and I walked away satisfied, and I realized that I love Japanese breakfast maybe more than anything else about my adopted country. I never enjoy eating the morning meal unless it is as I described above. I need to find a restaurant around here…

On the way back to the main island we decided to make a side tour at one of the temples in Shikoku’s very famous 88 temple pilgrimage circuit. To this day many pilgrims make their way around the island to see all of the temples. We just have 87 more to go before we unlock our highest levels of mystical fireball powers. A few omiyage stops, lunch, and the Taco Ferry later and we were back in Akashi on Sunday night. Heather and I spent a few hours at her apartment and I headed back to Kaibara at 21:00. I met up with my neighboring JET Chris on a train from Amagasaki and got back to my aparyment around 00:30. Just enough time to rest up for work this morning!

I have a taste for surfing now, and I will be going again several times while here in Japan. I’ve uploaded some photos to the gallery for your viewing pleasure.

We finally got to our guesthouse on Shikoku at about 1:00 A.asdfM., about two hours after we said we would get there. The owner, Ten, stayed up waiting for us and got us settled in after telling us that breakfast was served at 8:00. Ten is quite the guy. He spends his life surfing in Japan, traveling to Hawaii to surf and bring back food, and thinking about surfing. Oh, and helping other people surf. He seems happy.