Japanese Surfers

There's a scene in Lost in Translation where the character played by Bill Murray is at a party in Tokyo and he's just been told that his host likes to surf, "You surf?" That's how I felt too. I mean, surfing is, of course, really only done in a few places: Hawai`i, Australia, maybe Costa Rica, and then maybe Florida; I don't know. My understanding is that surfing only exists in these few places.

Then I moved to Okinawa and noticed that the locals really like surfing-related stuff. I figured it was due to being in a sub-tropical environment. But then, while in Kyoto, I was told that the owner of our guest house met many Japanese surfers in Bali and these surfers had begun their careers in Okinawa.

But whenever I went to the places where I thought I was told there was surfing I saw only placid ocean.

Then a tropical storm was in the region and the surf was up: