Any surf trip, no matter the destination, is infinitely better with the company of a knowledgable local. You give them the opportunity to share a piece of themselves and their home, and you gain the advantage of A) some inside scoopage on the best waves, maximizing your chances of scoring, and B) getting a true taste of the local culture.
For Laura Enever, that meant linking up with Shino Matsuda, a 17-year-old surfer who is very likely to make Japan’s Olympic team, and Natsumi Taoka, an aspiring future world champion longboarder for the latest in her Know the Feeling travel series. The cherry on top? She found herself there in the midst of a typhoon swell. And here’s where it all comes together, because one might think landing in a foreign country during any kind of swell automatically equates to scoring, but in Japan there are so many fickle variables that most every session is a roll of the dice. With Shino’s and Natsumi’s help, the women find themselves on the hunt through different parts of Japan’s diverse 29,000 kilometers of coastline.
Enever’s trip is a solid reminder that, in her own words, sometimes “the best plan may be no plan at all.”
