Jiro Insists on Tabis

"You'll need tabis," Jiro says. "I can do it in slippers because I know what I am doing."

We pull on our tabis standing around the rear of Jiro's car -- three of us and Jiro. We crunchcrunchcrunch along the road's shoulder, the metal studs in our footwear grating on the pavement. Jiro dives into the ocean headfirst while tourists next to us daintily enter the water, barefoot, using a metal stairway affixed to the rock.

We swim, bounce to the breakwater that creates the lagoon and scramble back out of the water and onto the rocks. "Don't walk," says Jiro. "Step, get your footing, then move. See these brown parts? That's limu. If you see limu it's going to be very slippery. So be careful."

We walk carefully across the black rocks, three haoles with tabis and Jiro in his plastic flip flops. We round the corner away from the lagoon, leaving behind the small groups of visitors wading in the lagoon. We're next to the shore break now, picking our way along the shoreline while sets of waves fill the rocks' open spaces with white foam. "Wait until you can see where you're stepping," says Jiro.

Jiro is getting married tomorrow. He chose this type of hard beach walking for the morning before his wedding day, but generously invited a few of us along. "Never turn your back on the ocean," he says. "But if you see a huge fuckin' wave -- run."

The four of us stand in the seaspray, watching the ocean move against the rocks' powerful inertia.

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