The Toppy

The linear time is going to get weird from here on out. I will try to go back through the week in Tanegashima. But not all at once. James, Alex, Cam and I took the train down early two Sunday's ago. Alex and Cam brought their kettle so that they could have tea. My surfboard blocked off about two doors between the train cars. We took the Toppy, a high-speed hydrofoil, from Kagoshima to Tanegashima. The last time Cam took it, it crashed into a whale, or a North Korean sub, or something, at 78kph resulting in numerous injuries and an award for Cam's first-aidary. The dock smelled like evry dock I have ever been around. It always make me feel like vomiting a sandwich I haven't eaten. The engines sound like rockets and the ue the space in front of the emergency exit to store our boards. A typhoon was passing from Taiwan to China. We headed south through the relative calm of Kinko Wan to the point where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Japan. In the distance I noticed giant, crytal blue waves errupting like a nightmare compilation of lgihthouse posters. I mentioned them to Alex and assumed there was no way we would confront them. As we approached them at 70kph the whole boat began to take notice. It seemed like we all started screaming in unison. James suddenly woke up and pulled back the curtain. The captain rolled the hydrofoil hard to the left, making the view from the oppsing windows sea and sky. The TV was playing a broadcast of the Koshien High School Baseball Tournament, in which the end of each game is announced with a loud, screeching siren. It began to go off as the captian through the boat back hard to the right as waves roared up and crashed around us. I have never seen any waves like this in my life, not even in The Pass during a hurricane. I screamed like a little girl trapped in a hydrofoil, flying madly to its doom. Fortunately this only lasted for a few minutes as we cleared into open seas and set off towards Tanegashima.