You know when you’re a kid and you say “My dad is cooler that yours”? I can honestly say, my dad is cooler than yours, probably cooler than me. My ukulele playing, booze drinking (Mostly wine, cheap scotch, and sometimes margaritas) surfer (Of 40+ years) father is the epitome of cool. Although his style has become more lumberjack man over the years, this grown-up hippie knows people by the name of Frosty and Wingnut (Legendary surfers), and has friends at every beach in California. With that being said, it was awesome to visit Japan and come across a sea of surfers knowing my dad would rent a board and paddle out there in a second.

While in Japan, I visited Kamakura (1 hour outside of Tokyo) for some amazing temples – mostly ones with giant buddhas or tons of little ones. Let me start off by saying that the temples were sick, amazing, spiritual…great! I’d go again and highly recommend them to everyone visiting Japan.

What was equally cool to see was the surfing culture in Japan. After visiting Japan, I found out that outside of Australia, America, and Brazil, Japan has one of the biggest surfing populations in the world and man it was awesome to see. The beach in Kamakura is by most beach standards, “meh”, tiny waves, mostly beach/shore breaks and the waves come from windswells and not groundswells. But this beach by Japanese standards is good, a great place to get waves, and even learn how to surf. When you see a beach like this, which is unimpressive, and then you see an army of surfers, you know surfing is fucking huge here and going strong. There were even kids surfing with their parents.

This beach made me want to jump in and catch a wave. The waves were probably 2-3 feet, but everyone was taking off on whatever wave was breaking, not much of that territorial BS in other surf spots.