Nov. 13, 2024

I’ve found myself on an island I had never heard of until a couple of weeks ago. Clouds build up around the green mountains and water the land every day. This is the rainiest place in Japan, and it is gorgeous.

Somehow, a place this beautiful is not full of people. It’s almost eerie how buildings and boats and construction equipment are left abandoned to be eaten up by the greenery. At night, only a few streetlights provide a light in the dark. Half of the lights don’t turn on.

Before coming here, I stayed in Osaka, where the lights never went out. Car horns and sirens were the songs of the city. Here, the music is rain on the roof.
I’m here on a mission, trying to find waves to surf. Surfline and the internet in general, do not seem to be aware of any surfable waves here, but yesterday, I stumbled across an empty point break on my afternoon walk. Also, yesterday, my surfboard arrived at the port.

Traveling with surfboards in Japan is a massive pain in the ass (at least if you’re on a budget). Taking a surfboard on a train invites nasty stares and a general bad time. Thankfully, my friend in Tokyo did us the supreme favor of shipping our surfboards all the way to this remote island. There are no trains here, so we carried our boards on our heads and walked with them to our accommodation.

The boards were shipped with a company called Seino and wrapped in cardboard. Walking with them invited quite a few curious stares from the locals, but none seemed unfriendly.

In the coming days, I will now need to figure out the swells and venture out into the surf. This place is very rocky, and I suspect the point break I found is shallow. I’m not sure this place is a known surf spot, so it will be up to me to figure out the wave without guidance.