Our buddy Hiro loves to spend his downtime on the water. He works at Pearl Trading Company, Japan’s premier supplier of paddlesports gear, and he’s also an accomplished kayaker of many disciplines. One of the newest subcultures of kayaking is the blending of two sports: kayaking and fishing, which I hear is a ton of fun. Hiro is one of the founding fathers of Japanese Kayak Fishing and as you can see by his photo below, he’s just about got it dialed.

Another impressive subculture of kayaking is Squirt Boating. which has also become quite popular in Hiro’s homeland. Each year, squirt boating legend Jim Snyder makes his annual pilgrimage to Japan, accompanied by a “guest of honor.” The growth in popularity of squirt boating all over the world can be attributed to Jim and his amazing boat designs and technique. This year he invited our good friend Paul Bartholic from Asheville to join him on the journey. Paul (aka “Buddha”) was able to snag a video camera for the trip and he captured some pretty cool images of what hanging out in Japan is like. So check out this short video of Jim, Paul, and their friends from Japan. Musical score is compliments of DJ Phidelity.

-Bryan

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Downtime, Video Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.