Green IslandWhy Surfers are annoying
August 18th 2008 09:37
Gnarley waves
You know someone once asked me in a bar, “Hey, do you surf, dude?” Normally I would have been amused and a tiny bit flattered that at my age someone could mistake me for a man of athletic prowess and possibility. Not on this occasion. I had just returned from a vacation to a small island in Okinawa that should have been a great memory but had turned into a holiday I’d rather forget. Like all good drinkers I thought thoughts of bravado and witty put downs, but only shuffled off silently. However inside I was seething with the memories this random question had evoked.
So to step back, I went to the small island of Kumejima which is 2 hours by plane from Hanada airport in Tokyo and which amazingly enough, belongs to Japan. What great fortune on Japan’s part because it’s miles from Japan and suddenly paradise and not concrete and not that famous road crossing in Shibuya and not daft overdressed young people with Rod Stewart hairstyles. On the contrary, it’s island life as it should be. Whiter sand than Thailand, more fish and coral than Thailand, warmer water, better diving, empty and pretty much ten times more expensive than Thailand. And to say it again, empty. Everyone on the important islands prefers going to Hawaii and having Christian weddings; but that’s another blog. And as a consequence the modern buildings on the island would normally be poor taste 1960s architecture but because of the ghost town feel to the place the concrete rectangles have acquired the enhancing appeal of nostalgia and science fiction.
sunset and big waves
I was booked into a minshuku or Japanese boarding house (15 dollars a night for a floor to sleep on – what an average bargain) only 5 minutes walk from the beach. The boarding house was on a tiny street next to the beach. Nearby there was a convenience store to get 24 hour booze, a reggae bar and a cheap restaurant. I had my factor 30 and my stash and I was really looking forward to putting in some quality time with myself. I had a whole seven days on the beach and by the end of the first day I felt browner, more relaxed and somewhat of a dash on a body board.
So anyway, there I was one night in the reggae bar pondering on the infinitesimal difference in taste between Okinawan “Orion” beer and any other “real draught” beer I had tasted in Japan, when in walks this young American all brown and blonde with a huge weight of wholesome outdoorness and fake Zen charisma that made me think of karaoke booth videos. It wasn’t long before he zoned in on me and started chatting. And soon out it popped like a pregnant thought, “Hey, dude, do you surf?” Oh, the joy I felt - that he could mistakenly consider me worthy enough to ride the back of furious waves and incite the envy of the gods.
So, beside, this verbal tic involving “dude” Taggy seemed a perfectly acceptable drinking partner (after all pub rules apply) and as Billy Joel so rightly said, “Sharing a drink called loneliness is better than drinking alone.” Thus, for the next few hours we chucked the ball back and forth and cracked a few gags. Although the gags started to get thin on the ground when Taggy declared that “Team America” was a dumb movie “because it had puppets.” Luckily I could always fall back on my ruminations of Orion beer to keep blissfully tuned into the music of the spheres; so I stayed despite the slightly gauche personality of my drinking buddy.
Stunning white sand beach
Needless to say Orion beer was too deeply studied by the writer that night and the rest is not entirely clear. Although I do think it is clear to me now, that maybe the main reason why it is not clear is because I wish to forget the awful thing that happened to me. It’s so harrowing that it makes me feel that I should fly in the face of modern psychoanalytic practice and not re-tell the event. What good can revelling in the detail do? How does this help the healing process? If time is the great healer, it is because time makes us forget. So for the sake of accuracy and plot I will just list what Taggy did to me and hope that brevity will invite time to heal me sooner.
1) Taggy stole my stash. Just before leaving I went to the toilet and left my bag with my stash in it by my vacated chair.
2) Taggy went home with the ‘fit hippy bird’ that I had spotted first. Before he came into the bar I had started an idle but promising banter with some random Japanese youngsters on holiday. It was over a couple of games of five dollar pool. She was in this group and I swear she was definitely more into me.
3) He stole my money.
4) He stole my wallet as well. How avaricious. He could have left me my old nicely lumpy leather wallet.
5) And most damningly, he knew Jack Johnson and had surfed with the mellow voiced singer/songwriter a few times in Hawaii. Naturally, he used this fact shamelessly to ingratiate himself with those around him.
6) He left while I was in the toilet and the bar bloke said he had left with the fit hippy bird. And he didn’t even say goodbye or promise to become facebook friends.
To many of you the above must blatantly appear to be fiction. And indeed it is. There are no waves in Okinawa (who knows why). But Kumejima is really beautiful. I’ve never met an annoying surfer but it struck me recently that surfers and surfing is both a great stalking horse for my blunt barbs and a popular keyword. So there you have an optimized blog that will probably never make me more than 5 dollars in ad sense revenue in my life – which was the price of a game a pool in Okinawa.
Better snorkelling than Thailand
The first two pictures are taken in Mexico by Colin
The last 2 pictures are from my holiday in Kumejima, Okinawa, Japan.
| 42 |
| Vote |
Shared on
Subscribe to this blog
