The Trees are Really Sneezing Today

Link Adam, 21, goes on a weekend adventure surfing with friends. When he arrives, he sees things are not as they should be. He finds a city populated by demanding and slightly crazy restaurant owners, and by Jamaican Hawaiian Japanese surfer dudes. It’s a place where OMLGP has no effect. A city where currency… has no meaning! Link boarded the K-Limited Express Train… to the Twilight Zone!

Doo dee doo doo doo dee doo doo….

I’m writing this well after the actual events have occurred, and I don’t have any pics to remember it by, so here’s hoping my memory serves me correctly.

Two Saturdays ago I had work. It’s a lot of fun to work on Saturday. I’d highly recommend it. In the evening I went to Anton’s place, bring my effects, but not my hat. After dinner we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean in Nara. It was in English, hurrah, with Japanese subtitles (Me and Anton still don’t know how they managed to translate "Savvy?"). The theatre was small and very level compared to Canadian theatres. Seats are reserved, so no looking about trying to commandeer the best seats. As for the movie, not as good as the first, but still very good, with some excellent scenes, to be sure! However, it was probably not the most opportune moment to go; most trains stopped before the movie ended, so we only made it to Saidaiji station and had to take a cab the rest of the way.

The next day we got up early and went down to Wakayama to meet Keith. Taking advantage of the Everything’s Free in Wakayama train station policy to get to Keith’s station nearly free of charge. We went for breakfast #2 at the station, I had kekko desu ("I’m fine as I am thanks"), which has been the subject of many jokes directed at me since. Thank you Anton and Keith, my revenge will be swift and painful.

Then we headed to Isonura beach to rent some surfboards. The two rental shops, however, were both sold out! So we passed by a reggae bar, basically an old bus transformed into a… bar… painted in yellow and green with a Jamaican flag and reggae playing. The young dudes running the bar agree to rent us their surfboards, 4h for 2600 yen each, not too shabby, apparently we got 400 yen off the normal price cause we were so cool and hip and rad and stuff.

Surfing was a lot of fun, the water wasn’t too cold, and there were hundreds of surfers out there. To be fair, I sucked. It’s hard just getting out far enough, with the waves pulling you back towards the shore, especially for someone with no mass like me. Once out there though, it’s good, I was able to catch a wave quite easily, standing up was another matter. But still managed to a few times, for a few seconds, woohoo!

After a few hours I got cold and hungry and tired, (and I was a little bit wet) so I decided to head back and get changed. While waiting for Anton and Keith I hung with the Jamaicans, one guy knew a little bit of English… The conversation started out good, but eventually, without getting into too much detail, got a bit interesting, and some of the questions I got asked were… lacking good grammar and perhaps decency.

Anton and Keith arrived back, showered, changed, etc, then we went back to Wakayama. Where we had an crazy older lady, who ran a restaurant, pressuring us to come in. Anton and Keith wanted ramen, so they were reluctant at first. I was reluctant because there was a crazy older lady pressuring me into her store. But we finally broke down (pwned as Anton called it) and went in. We got the special I think? Pasta with ham and shrimp, and the lady talking to us the whole time we were eating. Eventually she went to a nearby restaurant and bought a plate of sushi, brought it to our table, and sat down and started sharing it with us. Which is very odd… But she didn’t charge us for it, and even gave us a bit of a discount on our meal. We eventually left (in my case, escaped) because I had to make it home for shower curfew.

And that was the exciting weekend. On Tuesday we went to Osaka to see the fireworks for Tenjin Matsuri. Unfortunately, with me being the only one on time, we missed them. But not totally a waste, had to meet Keith anyway, and we went for dinner for okonomiyaki and kekko desu. Anton and Keith bought beer off some attractive girls in bathing suits. And then I went home.

More to come on my Tokyo adventure, but that’s later, cause I’m too tired to write it tonight, and the cicadas will inevitably wake me up too early tomorrow.

And pics of Tokyo are up on my web album. picasaweb.google.com/keidan.link