Ikumi mi ni Iku

Well those two most dreaded of words, beam and time, have caused a bit of a slow down in my blogging of late. That combined with a round of bad expression from some rather lame duck bacteria has left me with little free time. Good job I enjoy the mountain life style ey. Anyway since I’ve not really been upto much it’s time for the final installment of my golden week adventures.

The final few days saw some mateys and me from the magical ring of mystery and wonder (AKA Spring8) venturing south for warmer climes and the Pacific Ocean. That’s right I finally managed to work my way down to the illustrious southern Island of Shikoku for a bit of a road trip.

We headed out by car for two reasons. Firstly, Shikoku is not so accessible by the wonderful train systems of Japan, and secondly, ROAD TRIP. Traffic was our friend in the early morning, rather surprising as it was the first day of a four day week end for Japan, our guess is that most people were headed in the other direction. We cruised down the expressway to Maiko and crossed the Akashi daihashi no problem.

Moving swiftly through Awaji, the main Island between Honshu and Shikoku, we came to a place I’d wanted to check out for some time, Naruto. This place is famous for it’s awesome whirlpools, 渦巻き in Japanese, and also sharing the name of a rather famous manga character, actually he’s named after the city and features many whirlpool references. Sadly it was not our day as we came midway through the tides meaning the sea was calmer than a Buddhist monastery,　maybe next time. We did get some wicked udon though.

After departing Naruto we found out why the trip had been so smooth so far. It seemed all of Japan was driving through Tokushima. We must have travelled about 3 miles in 30 minutes at one point. Thanks to some quick route plotting, with a little help from our navi, we were soon on our way again.

Our final destination was Ikumi, a small beach on the southeastern edge of Shikoku. It wasn’t the prettiest of beaches, at one point I was reminded of Newbo, but that's not why we were there. Sadly we arrived a little too late to surf the first day but there would be plenty of time afterwards. We met up with one of our friends who had come from Osaka and she introduced us to her friends who ran the surf rental place we’d be frequenting.

After a few self-introductions we turned back around to go to our lodgings, Nasa house. I knew we were onto a good thing when we pulled up outside and there were old surfboards lying about the place and an extremely gnarled skateboard. The bottom floor was one giant living room with more surf memorabilia and a load of musical instruments. This place had a total hippy vibe and I felt at ease pretty quickly.

We set up a BBQ up front and began to chat away. I’ll admit I didn’t catch everything, the Kansai-ben was heavy and these guys spoke almost no English, but everyone was really cool. I think these were possibly the most laid back Japanese people I’d ever met, a total contrast to the guys at work. Nothing was a problem and they were in no rush to do anything.

The night set things up as they meant to go on. We pretty much spent the days surfing and mucking about on the beach, chatting in the sun. Then at night hitting the onsen, a really nice Japanese restaurant and then back to Nasa house to drink and gab on about anything (mostly surfing) till the early hours.

My Japanese still sucks but I’m getting better at communicating than I thought. I’m a guy with a lot to say and so I think the inability to articulate myself is what drives me to learn the language more than anything else. I’m scouse after all; I’ve got a big gob.

I don’t exaggerate when I say that this is the most fun I’ve had since I came to Japan. The surfing was fun and the time to unwind ws nice but it was the people that made it incredible. You can always trust people into board sports to be absolutely wicked and these guys were no exception. It’s nice to see that the attitude transcends nationality. I’d love to go surfing again for sure and it inspired me to pick up a skateboard again.

Mostly though I’d like to get to the bar some of the guys own in Osaka and say hi again. I think the word 幸せ  sums up the whole trip can’t wait till my next bit of free time, roll on July cos May has been a bit of a crap one.

Mata kondo ne.