Meet Hiroto Ohhara – Japan’s Next Big Thing

Nineteen year old Japanese surfer Hiroto Ohhara is perhaps best known for winning the 2015 US open and then declaring that he would be using his prize money ‘to get some cars!’.

Since then Hiroto has been quietly grinding away on the QS, receiving very little attention from the international surf media, despite becoming the most successful Japanese competitive surfer ever (not including Kanoa Igarashi) and, along with fellow QS competitors Shun Murakami and Hiroto Arai, is helping cement Japan’s place on the high performance surf map.

Couple close out barrels and broken fins… film by @deltaforcesurf had couple fun surf in Japan and now off to Hawaii for the triple crown! can’t wait!

A video posted by hirotoohhara (@hirotoohhara) on Nov 9, 2016 at 9:33pm PST

In a recent edit from Colours Mag we heard what Hiroto had to say for himself, outside his desire for a new fleet of whips, and we decided to translate it so international surf fans can get to know the man a little better.

“Surfing is everything, it’s my life.” he begins “It’s something that I’ve always enjoyed, going into ocean is my habit now. Being in the water, feeling the waves makes me feel alive.”

“Even on down days, you still feel good in it. I suppose how I feel about surfing is not something that I talk about. You can easily talk about things that you enjoy or you simply like, but for me surfing isn’t anything like that.”

“It’s like when you eat, you don’t really say “I’m going to eat now!”, you just do it. And that’s what surfing is for me.”

These wise words are also interspersed with some excellent high performance surfing: