Stoked and only slightly scarred: Surf’s always up with Hot Sushi on Tybee Island

He wears a single neon sleeve on his left leg, the same one where the shark sunk its teeth into him.

Two summers ago, Tybee Island surf instructor Yamada Atsushi — better known by his sobriquet, Hot Sushi — made international news when an aquatic predator mistook him for a snack during a session near the south jetty. While he didn’t catch a glimpse of the attacker, researchers later posited that it was likely one of the juvenile bull sharks or blacktip that commonly roam just beyond the breakers.

I’m dying to see the scar.

I mean, I’m also hoping to catch up with this legendary local, who emigrated from Japan in the 1990s as a multidisciplinary athlete with prowess in skiing, soccer and martial arts, adding surfing to his oeuvre as he traveled around the world. After stints in Guam and Hawaii, he and his family settled in Savannah in 2001, and in 2012 he launched Hot Sushi’s Happy Surf Camp Aloha amid Tybee’s placid waters.

Known for his Level 10 alacrity and puttering ‘69 VW bus stacked with surfboards, Hot Sushi is a summertime staple at the south end of the beach. Each week of his camp is booked solid with kids ages 6-12 hopped up on the thrill of riding the waves, their grown-ups delighted to see them distanced from Roblox for a few hours.

“Watching my guy excitedly get up every morning so he could go to surf camp has been so fulfilling; it's a lot a lot easier than waking him up for school, just sayin’,” remarks boy dad Joa Kelley as 8-year-old Parker glides up to the shore, fist pumping.

“Sushi’s a real spiritual guy; it’s not just surfing lessons he’s teaching. He’s getting kids to focus on the Zen around them.”

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'I am going to have to go to surf camp'

Highly respectful and easily forgiving of Mother Nature’s inconveniences, Hot Sushi barely took any time off after the shark bite and operates in all weather, except for lightning.

“Time to get it in the water! Let’s gooooo!” he calls to his charges on a bright July morning when I show up to observe him in action. We’ve waved aloha to each other in the carpool line plenty of times, and I’ve been threatening to write a story about him for years, though we’ve never sat down to talk.

The man is not easy to pin down. Compact and constantly moving, he’s like a fish darting through a reef as he checks in with the rest of the school, keeping up a choppy patter of encouragement as his staff of young, tanned acolytes spread out behind the line-up. He knows everyone’s name, even if they just arrived that morning.

“Bend your knees, Leah! Yeah, yeah, feet wider, Roberto! Paddle, paddle, paddle, big wave coming, you got this, Connor!”

Halfway through the three-hour session, Hot Sushi signals it’s time to come in to drink some water and smear on more sunscreen.

Suddenly, he is wielding what looks like a machete.

“Time to cut the watermelon!”

This daily ritual is provided by Davis Produce, and massive cheers go up when the first crack of the knife reveals the inside as yellow. I try to approach him with a few quick questions about life after shark — maybe he could just tug down the leg sleeve? — but he’s focused on the kids. I email later, asking if I can buy him a coconut water after he’s loaded up for the day, but with 10 back-to-back weekly sessions during the summer his time is tight.

It becomes clear that if I am going to get anything good to write about Hot Sushi, I am going to have to go to surf camp.

'Cocaine sharks' and marauding sea otters

A few words about my surfing history: I grew up in Arizona, which has not been near an ocean for approximately 300 million years. In the ‘80s we did have Big Surf, a waterpark that resembled a giant flushing toilet that roiled with a single machine-generated wave every 20 minutes, but I mostly just sat on my Love Boat beach towel, slathered in baby oil turning my hair orange with Sun-In.

While living in the San Francisco Bay area, I met a cute surfer guy from Savannah who gallantly carved the overhead-high waves of the Pacific, which looks majestic from the shore but in its depths is as cold and unkind as an Alcatraz prison guard. The few times I donned a wetsuit to impress my paramour, I ended up in the rocks with my tush and ego bruised and seaweed in my hair and that was that.

I’ve never attempted to surf again, even when said surfer dude tried to entice me with Tybee’s sweet little breaks. Just call me a “wahine weenie.” On certain days, I will occasionally boogie board, which keeps one’s center of gravity safely contained, and I’ll languidly paddleboard all day long on the Back River if the tides are right and the wind stays calm. But even after 25 years of marriage to a surfer, I have never ridden a surfboard, for a couple of reasons.

Obviously, the sharks. I mean, I wouldn’t even go in the water at Big Surf after I saw JAWS. Now we’ve got psycho “cocaine sharks” feasting on jettisoned bounty off the coast of Florida to worry about, though I suppose off of Tybee the sharks are more likely to be addled by whatever high you get from slurping plastic sand toys and boiled peanut shells.

Of course, Hot Sushi’s chomp was incredibly rare. Georgia has had only 17 reported “unprovoked” shark attacks since 1837, and according to our daughter Liberty and Tybee Island Marine Science Center summer educator, “You are way more likely to die by a vending machine falling on you.”

Back in California, surfers also have to beware of a marauding sea otter that’s been jacking boards near Santa Cruz, but honestly, otters are so cute I’d probably just hand mine over and also give it my lunch.

Probably my biggest excuse for never learning to surf is that I feel like I missed the boat, so to speak. When you’re halfway through your life — maybe even more — you have to accept there are things you’re just not gonna do, because life’s beaten you up enough and keeping one’s dignity outweighs the disappointment. I’ve got a bad hip and the balance of a cocaine elephant, and the risk has seemed less worth it with every passing year.

But I look at my husband, who paddles out far less often these days than he used to but always comes out of the water with his eyes shining. And there’s Hot Sushi, who’s not only suffered shark bites but also broken bones and multiple surgeries and lord knows what else but remains committed to sharing the happiness that surfing brings.

And so here I am, standing on the beach with a dozen children, all of us in long-sleeved rash guards and staring soberly out at the glassy ocean.

“OK kids, it’s time to surf! It’s gonna be a great day!” cheers Hot Sushi, his sunglasses reflecting the glittering expanse.

The new kids and I get a quick on-land lesson from lithe, blond instructor Blayne on how to pop up from your stomach when the wave comes. I practice a few times as my 51 year-old back wonders what in the actual world we are doing here and maybe we could lie down and do some yoga instead?

Then everyone rushes out into the water with their 9-foot foam boards. I hang back with Anita Poole, who lives on Isle of Hope and has brought her visiting grandchildren to learn the ways of the coast. We applaud as one of her grandgirls, from landlocked Thomasville, stands up on her second try.

“Don’t you want to come out with us?” I ask Anita, hoping for some middle-age solidarity.

She shakes her head. “But I think you’re ready,” she says encouragingly.

Overseeing the class but sensing I may need special attention, Sushi assigns his 23-year-old son, Ichi Yamada, as my minder. The recent grad from the UGA Grady School of Journalism counts himself more of a skater than a surfer, but he’s stoked to be spending another summer helping out his dad as he figures out what’s next in life.

With a dazzling smile and the patient vibe of someone who’s already mastered going with the flow, Ichi assures me that today is the day I will surf.

“It’s OK to be nervous,” he says. “But you’ll get the hang of it, you’ll see.”

And with that, he pushes my board into an ankle-high ripple that can only be referred to as a “microwave.” “You got it, you got it!” I hear him call behind me.

I pop to my feet as instructed, and for one-and-a-half glorious seconds, I feel the wave bouying me, the supreme power of the ocean carrying me gently to shore, where Anita claps for me. The next wave I manage to ride for three seconds, and within an hour I don’t even need Ichi to push me, I just paddle away from the wave like it’s trying to eat me and whoosh, I’m doing it, I’m doing it!

Then four military planes from Hunter Air Force Base buzz the beach, dipping their wings obnoxiously as the children cover their ears. This time I tumble in the broken shells at the tide line that scrape my shin into a bloody crisscross, which will leave a tic-tac-toe of scars metallurgist and part-time beach bum Matt Toole calls a “Tybee tattoo.”

I drag the board back past the breakers to try again, but I’ve lost my beginners’ momentum. After the watermelon break (yeah! It’s got seeds!), my fellow classmates return to shred the baby swell kicking up, but I still can’t catch my balance on another wave, slamming parts of my body that already hurt when I woke up this morning.

“How can this be so hard when I’ve already been doing it all day?” I hear a 10 year-old boy named Eli from Ohio ask Ichi, his face crumpling with frustration. “My knee hurts and everyone else is better than me and I don’t even know why I’m here.”

Same, little man, same.

Ichi gently tells him to keep trying and sends him off on another wave. Down the line I see his dad’s “Radically Inclusive,” baseball hat, swag from the downtown coffeeshop Bitty & Beau’s that employs differently-abled folks. Their mission mirrors Hot Sushi’s philosophy on surfing—that with a little support, everyone is capable of participating. He has long been involved in local Surfers for Autism campaigns, and I watch him float with a young man with Down Syndrome who is gripping the sides of his board and grinning from ear-to-ear.

I hear Ichi give a whoop. “This one’s yours!”

I paddle hard and feel the now-familiar lift of the wave, steadying my shoulders as I plant my feet on the board.

Hot Sushi sees me and raises one hand to give me the shaka, the thumb-to-pinky gesture that surfers bestow in greeting, or to give thanks, or to say Yo, you’re one of us.

“Yeah Jessica! Bend your knees! Keep going! Keep going!”

I ride all the way in and curtsey as I step off, deciding to call it a day before my hip rebels. The young gent from Ohio follows in on his own wave soon after, and as everyone else comes in I see him run to hug Ichi, beaming.

Sushi never does show me his scar, but that’s fine.

The lesson of Happy Surf Camp Aloha isn’t about all the things out there are to be afraid of, anyway. It’s about doing your best and accepting help, and sharing the line-up and a really good watermelon.

And also: Don’t give up on anything because there’s always a chance, as long as the waves keep coming.

Catch the last waves of summer >> Camp weeks 9 and 10 are all that’s left of the Summer 2023 surf season. Hang Ten if you get the chance, and go to happy-surfing.info.

Jessica Leigh Lebos delivers fresh local content every week at savannahsideways.com. Her latest book, "The Camellia Thief & Other Tales," is available online and at your favorite local independent bookstore.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA Tybee Island Hot Sushi Surfing classes shark bite