Around The World In 80 Waves

Japan is about twice as big as the British Isles, however most of it is covered in dense forest. This makes the cities incredibly densely populated, which results in things being piled on top of one another because there isn’t enough land to go around.

I am going to be here for the next 10 days and as usual will have nowhere near long enough to do the country justice. I’m hoping to at least get a flavour of life whilst here, as well as a couple of waves too.

I arrive at Tokyo first thing in the morning and straight away get a reality check about how big the language barrier will be here.

There are a few signs which explain things using the Latin alphabet, but most are in Japanese character form. The problem I have is that I have no idea what the signs might actually be for. E.g. Are they telling me the name of a street, that there is a sale on at a furniture shop or perhaps that this is an emergency exit?

I do manage to find my way from Narita airport into the centre of Tokyo, but due to my early arrival in the country I roll into town right in the middle of the morning rush hour.

I am already massively confused by everything here, but it is at least tiring and at worst painful trying to cross the city to my hostel in the morning rush hour. If you have ever seen images of the Tokyo underground I’m sure you will understand especially because I was carrying an 8’0″ surfboard as well as the rest of my baggage!

Japan has always been a sea faring nation and sea food still constitutes a huge portion of the people’s diet here.

There are several famous waves here. None more so than this picture by Katsushika Hokusai. I am looking forward to getting a very different slant on surf culture during my short stay here.

Of course the Japanese wave that everybody will know about was the tsunami which hit the east coast of the islands on 11th March 2011 following a massive earthquake off the coast.

The earthquake moved Honshu, which is the main island of Japan, 8 feet eastwards and shifted the Earth on its axis by approximately 15 cm. The resulting waves reached heights of up to 133 feet which travelled as far as 6 miles inland. 

Nearly 16,000 people were killed and another 2,500 are still listed as missing. 130,000 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 1,000,000 being badly damaged. It also caused severe structural damage to roads and railways as well as fires in many areas, and caused a dam to collapse. Not to forget the ongoing issues at Fukushima. I can’t really add anything jolly to brighten these statistics I’m afraid. Nor should I.