Surfing Malibu with Takeo and listening to "Hachiman"



A big south swell is hitting the beaches of Los Angeles so Takeo, and I went to surf Malibu, along with Papa Takeo who is visiting from Japan.

I've been surfing for a year now, and I'm just at the point where I can get up easily and ride most waves and I'm learning to make turns and carve the wave. Takeo has been surfing since he was 14 so he's very good, and Papa Takeo has been surfing since 1970. We had a nice session at Malibu, and I got 12 or 15 waves, but none were very long rides, as you can see in this video.

Before I started surfing I was a boogie boarder. I used to go out as a kid in Shimane, and then boogie boarded in Los Angeles when I came here. In the video below you can see some footage of me boogie boarding with youtubers ericsurf6 and hikosaemon in Shonan, Japan.






The music is by a band called "Hachiman" that just released their first album in the US. They have another great song called "Flavor of the Month" that Hikosaemon had on a video, but they had to take it off of Youtube when the album was released. Check it out on Itunes.

Haleiwa Sea Turtle Friends



On Monday I went surfing at Haleiwa in the North Shore of Oahu. It's a spot famous for big waves and happy sea turtles. The turtles are almost 1/3 the size of a Ken Tanaka, and are much better swimmers.

In California I get to surf with a lot of plastic bottles, dolphins, sea lions and pelican friends. At Haleiwa, I paddled around the surf with one very handsome sea turtle (Charlie) and we duck dived a big set of waves together.

I wanted to do a video interview of the turtle but I couldn't bring my video camera into the water. We mostly talked about waves and food. The sea turtles eat a tasty kind of seaweed called Limu. I ate some Limu ahi poke, which is tuna sashimi chunks with limu seaweed, and I understand why these turtles like to eat Limu. Charlie described the Limu in Oahu's north shore as "da most ono in da islands", but he said the algae is a little better on the leeward side of Molokai.



The North Shore is famous for it's giant waves in the winter, but it was a small day of 4-6 foot wave faces ( about baby quadruple overhead..depending on the height of the baby).

Hawaii, and dogs drinking beer


On my recent trip to Hawaii I saw and ate many nice things. I ate some of the things I saw, but not most of them.

One of my favorite things about Hawaii is Fish. At the FoodLand store on Kapahulu and Kapiolani Blvd you can get many kinds of fresh fish that is very cheap. I got Ono, Ahi, Opah, Shark, and some other kinds for just a few dollars. I cooked them with shoyu (soy sauce) and garlic and ate them over rice every day. The tuna belly shown in this video was TORO fatty tuna. I ate it as sashimi and it tasted like eating a beautiful underwater dream where happy fish float into your mouth and stomach. If you buy this amount of toro at MItsuwa or Marukai in Los Angeles, it will cost $15-20.

I was sad to learn about the problem of canine alcoholism in Japan. Some dogs get depressed and restless from island life and they become abusers of American lite beers. I have tasted the beer this dog is drinking. It's called "Coors LIte". I'm pretty sure that the company designs the taste to appeal to dogs.

Giovanni's shrimp truck is the name of the truck shown at the end of the video. It's a famous shrimp truck in the town of Haleiwa in the North Shore of Oahu. You can get shrimp in butter and garlic, lemon butter, or spicy.
I hope that when I die, I don't find out that God is a vengeful salt water shrimp.




I have many videos about Hawaii. Here are some of the most popular ones.

How to speak Pidgin



Ken Tanaka eats S&*T


Ken Tanaka Lost Parody



Hawiian STrip Club


Ken Tanaka meets a nice Tarot farmer

High Surf in Los Angeles



For the past few days there has been a high surf advisory and the waves have been very big in Los Angeles. Most spots were 5-7 feet but today was a very big day and one of my favorite spots, El Porto, had 10-15 foot waves. There were even some 20 foot waves breaking outside according to the surfer with the broken board in this video. Someday I would like to ride waves that big, but I would like to ride on top of a dolphin instead of a surf board....or maybe a whale shark.


You can see another video of high surf at El Porto last year at the same time. Both videos are taken at El Segundo Jetty. This year is much bigger.

Dolphin Jump



Lately I have been talking a lot about dolphins surfing. Surfing is a great way to meet dolphins because many of them are also surfers. Dolphins are very friendly and curious people.

Yesterday there was a large swell of 5-7 foot waves hitting the Ventura area. I watched the surf from the beach and saw a dolphin surfing. Usually you can just see their fins popping out of the wave, but this dolphin was different. He kept jumping out of the water as he rode the wave, and there was a human surfer right next to him, just a few feet away. They rode the wave together for quite a while. I had never seen a dolphin jump while riding the wave, I think this dolphin must be a pro-surfer. There were camera men on the beach with big, fancy cameras. Maybe the dolphin was there doing a photo shoot for Surfer magazine.

The above pic was taken on my iphone, so I couldn't zoom and I only have this bad photo. You can see a person surfing next to the white water, to the left of him is a horizontal shape, that is the dolphin. I wish I had my video camera. I paddled out right after taking this and I saw the same dolphin on a wave right in front of me. He was very large, and he almost jumped right over me. I was scared that he would hit me when he landed. It would be a lot of dolphin to be hit with. I was worried he might be mad at me for eating some of his friends before. Sorry, dolphin.

The 37th view of Mount Fuji

I went to Hawaii this past weekend for the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Contest. I didn't win.
I also stopped by the Honolulu Academy of the Arts. They were having a special display of Ukiyoe woodblock prints from Hokusai and HIroshige, including all 36 prints in the 36 views of Mt. Fuji series. You might not know the series by name but you have probably seen the images.





When I got back to Los Angeles, I was inspired to draw my own view of Mr. Fuji. So here is the 37th view of Mt. Fuji. It's not a wood block print. It was done with gouache and scrap paper. I'm the person in the back of the airplane, in row 37 seat E. If you look closely, you can see that I am playing sudoku. You have to look really, really closely.




Also, here is a video of the raw footage of the giant waves at Waimea bay on December 7th 2009.

King Kong and Godzilla on Vacation

This morning while I was surfing I was thinking about monsters again. I think about monsters a lot. I was thinking mostly about King Kong and also a little bit about Godzilla. I was wondering what their hobbies are.
Usually you can only see them running around stomping on things with their big monster feet. That is their job, but after work, maybe they play baseball, or surf, or look at their stamp collection.
The waves today were only 2-3 ft (1 meter). They would be too small for Godzilla and King Kong. They would only come up to King Kong's monkey toe. Kong and Godzilla would need 60 foot waves just to surf head high. There are only a few places in the world with waves that big, and they only break a few times each year. So, King Kong and Godzilla would have to travel all over the world and neither of them can fly, and they are too big to fit in a 747 and too poor to buy a ticket anyway. They would have to swim and by the time they got to the spot, the waves might have gotten smaller, or they might be too tired and cold.
They would also need a 60 foot surfboard, or maybe 90 feet if they wanted a longboard. It would take a lot of trees or fiberglass to make it. They would have to hire a lot of people to build it, and neither of them have a job because of the recession.

Sometime I make a list with two columns "why I want to be a monster"and "why I don't want to be one". This is one of the reasons why I would not want to be a monster.