Super Tsunami Sunday!!

(Pictured above: The author Tsunami spotting)

So, there I was in the water, on a perfect Sunday morning – or what passes for 'perfect' this time of year: no wind, no snow, faint fog in the air to cut down on the sun's glare, bang on low tide, and waves, nice, shoulder high, crumbly waves, rolling through one after the other. Admittedly my 7mm 'dead squid' wetsuit was a bit heavy, and the sub-zero air temperature made bloody sure you wouldn't mistake Itanki beach for Hawaii, but, and this 'but' pretty much forgives everything cold and winter like, but there was only me in the water.

Like I said, on a Sunday morning.

At low tide.

With sweet, forgiving, shoulder high waves.

Unbelievable.

Whooarrrrr went I as hung ten, fifteen and other multiples of five on wave after wave. And each time I rode one into the shore I would cast my eyes up to the car park and check for the hoardes. But they never came.

Unbelievable. Bordering, perhaps, just a shade on the spooky side too.

Anyway, I had been doing my best Laird Hamilton (google him, non-surfers) for close on 50 minutes when I espy two guys running down from the car park towards the shore. Waving at me.

I wave back. That's the type of friendly surfer dude that I am.

They wave back. They're friendly guys too. I'm feeling a lot of love down here in Itanki beach this Sunday morning.

They keep waving. Dedicated friendly guys. Actually, it looks more like their gesticulating rather than waving. Kind of gesticulating for me to come in.

I am still pondering this when I espy (I never just 'notice', I always 'espy') flashing red lights and a police car pulls up in the car park, a member of Muroran Five-O leaps out, comes running down the beach towards the water waving, no, him too, gesticulating at me.

Man, I think, they want to arrest me for being just too damn awesome on the water. I consider making a break for it, or at least catching another wave before they take me away to the Hokkaido equivalent of San Quentin, but they getting fairly frantic so I figure I'd better paddle in before the bullets start flying.

Turns out the two guys are from the Japanese Coastguard and I think they and the policeman are just as surprised to see me, a foreigner emerging from the water, as I am to see them.

“Do you speak Japanese?” I do. Not all the time admittedly, but when I have to.

“You have to stop surfing. It is too dangerous. There is a tsunami coming!”

I peer anxiously over my shoulder but all I can see is wave after unridden wave.

“Are you sure?” I ask them, casting another glance at the suspiciously tsunami free ocean.

“Yes, yes. The earthquake in Chile, you know, yesterday, there is a big tsunami coming. Coming fast. You have to leave the water now.”

The policeman pats his gun holster for added emphasis.

Actually, he doesn't. Rather he half heartedly waves this small fluorescent red baton he's holding. Part of me thinks they may be jealous locals, envious of my free-flowing, jazz like improvisations on the waves, a sort of surfing Miles Davis (though without the crippling heroin habit). Another, more sensible married-man-and-father-to-a-three-year-old-son part of me thinks of Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka that Christmas Eve a couple of years back.

I decide to head for the high ground.

Postscript:

Two days later the local newspaper reported that Muroran had indeed been engulfed by a 10cm tsunami. Yes, that's right dear reader, ten whole centimetres of oceanic fury. I owe my life to those two coastguard guys.