Tuesday, June 03, 2008

On Beaches and Beers

I've been keeping pretty busy lately, let me tell youz guyz.
Abdul visited (as I mentioned earlier) and I've been spending my weekends either cleaning, in concert, or heading down to the Nichinan coast.
Which is what this post is primarily about.

I'm trying to take up surfing, since all my buddies down here do it religiously. I went two weeks ago and stood up quite a few times! The hard part I find is actually catching the good waves and then timing your ride to grab the crest of the wave. I headed out last weekend because a typhoon was coming, but the waves were junk (surfer lingo for "crap") everywhere we went. So instead we drove to some tourist spots and then Mash and I went bodysurfing instead.

So here are a few photos from last weekend:

From right to left: Hassy (Ha see), Dala and Dala's friend who is wonderful but I've forgotten her name.

From left to right: washboard rocks and beach, my arm, my ridiculous face.

From right to left: Mash, Hassy.

Udo-jingu, a beautiful shrine dedicated to lord knows what. I was there for the rocks and sea.

See what I mean?

A lone bird perched on the left rock there, unfortunately the fspeed I was at made it too dark when I took the photo. Nuts.

Here you can see on the bottom right, a rock with a ring in the center. If you throw a little clay ball into the water-well within the ring, you will have lots of luck! Girls throw with their right arm, boys with their left. So sexist! (I'm just bitter because I didn't get any clay balls in).

Clay balls out to dry on the rocks, with the crashing sea behind. A typhoon was a-brewing off the coast.

After the trip to Udo-jingu we went to the beach, where Mash attempted to teach me how to body-surf. I'm crap at it, but the man can ride a wave from its beginnings all the way to the beach! When he surfed past me the top-half of his body was sticking out of the wave and he just turned and smiled at me, quickly passing by. It was a surreal moment, and I wish I had waterproof casing for my camera. I'll have to save up a good 1k for that though. One-a-dees-days!