My third surgery of the year quietly unraveled our winter routine. It brought an end to daily Rough Water training for the traditional New Year Ocean Race. Long-distance swimming was forbidden, but I could still patrol offshore and keep an eye on the preschool kids who shared our stretch of the Shonan coast.   As the Year of the Snake drew to a close, the sea showed no mercy. Off-season drownings continued in our coastal community, and optimism for the coming Year of the Hors

During my daily winter swim, I was caught in the Pacific's northern undercurrents along Fujisawa Bay. The day was sunny, the wind icy,...

A Happy Holiday Season and a Happier, More Peaceful Year of the Snake 🐍 2025 The good news is that since being elected to the...

Between the 2024 Paris Olympics & Paralympics, I hurried from Tokyo to Stockholm to meet my cancer-stricken fellow lifeguard, Witold...

Before my blind friend Yoshimi joined our HGSC rough water team, she had risked her life among jungle tribes in the Thai-Myanmar-Laos...

On that stormy Saturday afternoon during our 2023 Pacific Swim Race we never expected one of us would die before reaching the finish...

Protecting the +500 ocean swimmers in the Japan Power Sports Races has become tougher with each passing year of Covid. Though the number...

His creative drive has kept him on the edge. After brainstorming with Carlos Ghosn for half a year, an interview book that he had...

The freezing wind blowing from Northern Pacific nearly forced us to cancel our Christmas Rough Water Swimming Charity. Except for a...

A last-minute invitation to join an Olympic Security Team during the pandemic was as surprising for me as challenging for my fellow...

Though many of our friends have died during the past six months, my Japanese neighbor, Atsuko, refused to give up her Olympic dream. She...

Keeping foreign swimmers away from our neighborhood 2.5 km race to a secretive power spot seemed increasingly puzzling to me. Did the...

Following the lifting of his death penalty, Bronko, a Polish student, was deported to a Siberian heavy labor camp in the Sakhalin forest...

Our magical journeys to the afterlife and back to our Shonan neighborhood seem as natural for many of my Japanese lifesaving friends, as...

Though our Japanese lifeguard team has been captained by Shonan’s top rough water swimmers during the pandemics, the real guardians seem...

Among Yasuko's many passions was her growing love for a black Steinway and revisiting her nomadic family's secrets stored in a dozen...

They were fighting to save a foreign climber’s life. But his heart attack was too massive. Mt. Fuji’s wind was too strong for a rescue...

John broke the Guinness record by chance. The 12 FIFA World Cup finals on 4 continents that he attended consecutively remain vividly in...

His crawl strokes were powerful, his endurance against waves, legendary. Some locals called him Aquaman and Kamakura bay has been his...

She fell in love with one of Shonan's leading pro-surfers while taking his lessons. Then she replaced her high heels and fashionable...