Day at the River

The other day I took a bike ride down the river because the waves were completely flat. Usually I have my camera, but today all I had was my tiny Ipod nano. Inspired by the magical video clips flowing daily out of the hit blog site TheBlurfCurve, I tested out the video camera function on my Ipod nano to grab some clips using my hat as a tripod. I then had to remember how to use imovie to throw this together. Please enjoy this ghetto fabulous river scenery.

Day at the River from Bart Templeman on Vimeo.

The World Keeps Spinnin And There's No Time To Waste

Cojo Cup

This late breaking news is a few weeks old, but I participated in a surf contest a few weeks ago at a fun beachbreak down the road, the "Cojo Cup." Kind of like the infamous Burning Bowls, but with Bento lunchboxes and Asahi instead of Hotdogs and Budweiser. Nori-san of Cojo surfboards gets all of his team riders together for the contest every year, this year I was thrown into the "riders cup" division.


This is Nori-san, he shapes Cojo (yes named after the ranch) boards, recently he has been letting me try all kinds of test shapes, from shortboards to EPS/Styrofoam 4-fin rocket fish boards.



Akihito preps for his first round heat...



I ended up winning my division and taking home the coveted trophy and a cool 10 grand (yen). The prize money went straight to celebratory beer and sushi.



If you can read Japanese, you can check out Nori-san's website with all of the results HERE, (scroll down further on the site for exclusive photos of "Bert Templeman").

And some more photos of the action HERE

Rainy Season Left Bowls

The other day we had some great surf in the neighborhood, I ran into Pedro, a photographer from Brazil who is living in Japan. We exchanged info and he was kind enough to put this photo of me on his blog which you can see Here. The waves were great this day but it is the middle of rainy season here and we were surfing near a major rivermouth, so the water was a bit brown and you had to dodge the occasional log, tire or dead bird floating in the lineup.

Pedro has a ton of great photos of the surf and other subjects around here on his BLOG and on his WEBSITE, check out the lineup shots with mount Fuji in the background.

Beer Love

The Ebisu Garden Place in Tokyo, home of the Yebisu Beer Museum. Inside the museum there is a great timeline of the history of beer brewing in Japan, and a tasting lounge.




True Love.


It wouldn't fit in my backpack so we had to drink it all on the spot.

Random Tokyo Sights

Why Don't You...

Why? Because I may end up looking like a homeless train conductor.