Every Tuesday, Hideki Okubo heads her car from the Tokyo suburb of Chofu towards the Shonan coast, and the oldest and possibly the largest windsurfing school in Japan.
"Today the owner of Zushi Windsurfing School lives in Maui," Okubo explains, strong winds and driving rain keeping her sensibly on dry land. "The school is now run by his younger brother. We're a community; we windsurf together, hang out together. I guess the average age is mid-30s, but we have a 70-year-old who's out on the waves whenever conditions are right."
The name Hideki is most usually given to boys, not girls. It's her grandfather's fault, she says: "I have no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he was attaching more importance to the meaning of the Chinese characters than my sex."
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