I’m really amazed at how we randomly happened to come to Onjuku. It’s just a tiny town that has just a small handful of traffic lights and not even a single 7-11. The beach here is very nice but gets packed with families from Tokyo since it’s so close.
The train from Osaka to here was about 5 hours and was a good start to our week of downtime. We’re staying with a guy named Eugene Teal who has a surf school and guesthouse. It turns out he’s a championship pro surfer who is sponsored by Quicksilver and Go Pro. He grew up in Hawaii and met his Japanese wife there. They’ve been here for almost 15 years and he’s traveled the world to surf in competitions. Eugene sounds like a total surfer dude using words like “brah” and “gnarly”. There’s also a girl from Singapore who is our age that is staying at the guest house as well.
We were all able to stand up on our boards within 20 min and we were out on the water for 2 hours. Surfing is really hard on the elbows and knees since there’s a lot of friction. I also unintentionally drank a bunch of sea water. Kimberly did the best out of all of us riding the waves the longest without falling off.
I didn’t bring my gopro with me to our lesson but I’ll be sure to the next 2 days we’ll be surfing here.
