Greg and the River

This last weekend our group of JET programmers (Myself, ALTs, and Japanese friends) set out to Otoyo, Kochi, on Shikoku (one of Japan's 4 main islands), for a white-water rafting experience!
Click these pics to enlarge:

There were 27 of us altogether (I think) and half met to board our chartered bus at Hiroshima Station. Since we hired a driver, everyone was able to relax and drink some beers as we hurtled toward Fukuyama to pick up the rest of our bunch.

In Fukuyama, we had a restroom break, bought some more supplies, loaded everyone else on and rolled out for our hotel. Maybe our old, curmudgeon driver was trying to get us off his bus, or maybe we always drove like a maniac, but we got to hotel before we knew it and it was a beautiful, high-class ryokan. Even though it was now around 10 pm, three attendants in penguin suits waited to greet us and show us to our rooms which the lovely Myia, who was our trip leader, was kind enough to plan down to who would stay with who.

My room had a great time, but decided we wanted to keep it going a little longer, so we joined forces with some more friends to go searching the sleepy town for a convenience store. On the way we saw some dodgy-looking yakuza-type guys who seemed to be wearing some kind of festival clothing probably left over from the morning, but we steered clear of them and kept going until we eventually found our way. Our group of 7 got back to our hotel room safely and after a few drinks, songs, and stories, finally hit the hay.

The next morning I got up super early to use the hotel's bath house, before joining everyone for a huge, traditional, Japanese breakfast, then it was back on the bus for nap on the way to Happy Raft, the company in charge of guiding us down the Yoshino River that day.

Immediately I could tell the guides were gonna be a lot of fun. Most of them were from New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, and they wasted no time in giving us shit the way you treat an old friend. Everyone had crazy nicknames on the piece of tape on our helmets that was supposed to be used to I.D. people (mine said "Dick"), but others, like the girls on my raft, included "Shorty", "Bluey", and "M". Most of us put on wet suits provided by Happy Raft, and it took being in the river for about 5 minutes before I was overwhelmed with happiness at my decision to "bee one of the hive".  The water wasn't ice cold, but the suit was most definitely a life saver.

After hearing our safety talk 3 times and splitting up into teams, we got on our boat for one last bit of training in following our guides commands. Finally, as our guide Adam, who introduced himself first by his nickname "Schmiegel", tightened down our life jackets one-by-one, he shoved, or asked us - depending on his whim - to jump in the water. From there we had to learn how to climb, or be lifted back in. Then we finally were ready to go!

Our guide Adam was really friendly and open. Before we knew it it seemed like we had all shared our life stories, and he even started teaching us the ins and outs of working for Happy Raft as a guide (in a nutshell: when you fuck up, you have to buy the other guides beer =P). He is only 24, but already had many years experience in both Japan and New Zealand. From the start it was obvious he knew what he was doing, but as the day went on and rafts got stuck and people flew overboard, our raft remained almost completely unscathed, and it was definitely thanks to him.

Adam kept mixing up the seating order so everyone got to try being up front through some rapids. We even sat backwards twice and watched him take charge, face screwed up in concentration. Whenever we hit a patch of calm river it was acrobatic diving time. He started it off by doing a running full gainer off the nose of the boat, and we all tried our own variations. (Micah also pulled off the gainer, which was pretty crazy). This went on for the entirety of the day and after watching just a couple guides sneak up and ambush the other guides, it quickly turned into all out pirate battles where anyone could be surprise attacked by another boat!

Just before lunch we pulled up at some rock cliffs and almost everyone climbed up and jumped down. One climb was about 10 meters up, but I was plenty satisfied with my 5 meter fall. Then we rounded the bend, pulled over on the other side of the river, and climbed up a cliff to where fresh baked bagel sandwich lunches awaited us!

We were almost 2/3rds of the way done with our 10k adventure done the river, and taking a break to get warm, dry, and fed was a double-edged sword. I felt both immensely better and incredibly tired, but I knew that once we got back on the boat and got our adrenaline pumping, everything would be all good, and sure enough, it only got better:

 
 So that was our Saturday! We got dried off and changed back at their base, they gave us some tea and cake, and we had a considerably quieter bus trip home, but fun nonetheless.