Finally, Rafting

We woke up a little past 7 am the next morning, groggy from a night of drinking, but excited for the day ahead of us. We had another traditional Japanese meal (ie, I couldn’t sit comfortably) and we were out the door by 8:30 heading down to the river. At the “home base” we signed the forms and waivers in Japanese, got our wetsuits and lifejackets, and even had a safety lesson. Apparently more people get hurt from hitting each other with the paddles than any other cause. “Always remember to hold the T-grip so you don’t hurt someone” one of the guides said. This would be important later on.

We rode in a large bus for about 5 minutes to the water entry point. Once there,

We divided ourselves into two groups. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room on the “guys” boat, so I was voted off, and was in the boat with Kishimoto-san, her son, Marky, his girlfriend, Peter, and his wife. What really drove the decision was my boat was going to be the “Japanese” boat and the other one was gonna be the “English” boat.

So instead of having the young, blonde Australian girl as the leader in the English boat, I got the crazy straight-from-a-samurai-movie Japanese guy as our guide. This guy had the letters T.L. written in permanent marker on his forehead; he had beads in his beard (a Jack Sparrow look) and he looked like he was either on steroids or was eating his Wheaties. This guy was probably the buffest guy I’ve ever seen in person, huge arms and abs—he was really quite interesting to look at. Compounding his scary appearance, he shouted the entire time in Japanese, yelling and giving crazy instructions.

It turned out Mr. Scary was actually quite funny and nice. Every few seconds he would yell “Paddle High Five” which came out in perfect Japanese as “Pah-do-ru Ha-i-Fiiiii-bu!!!”. He yelled that every time we passed a rapid or splashed another boat.

While on the water I noticed several differences between white water rafting in Japan compared to doing it in America or Canada. The Japanese had a command that would require everyone to bounce up and down in the raft to make it really “bumpy”. It was kind of like jumping on a trampoline—I think they did this whenever we were stuck on a rock or going through shallow water. The main difference though, was the Japanese guide loved to have us paddle full blast INTO huge rocks. He would yell for us to go forward, then we hit a huge rock and go spinning off it. This was actually really really fun, and it was a great thing to do during the time between actual rapids.

Probably the most memorable part of the trip (for better or for worse) was maybe the second or third time we went into a rock. Now I’ve been rafting several times, and there hasn’t been one time where I was even CLOSE to falling in. Well, ramming into the rock at an angle, then the boat bouncing back knocked me off balance and I went over the edge backwards. Now I was completely fine; the water wasn’t too cold, I had my life jacket on, we weren’t in a rapid—I was fine. In fact I was even starting to swim to the raft. Peter, being the caring boss that he is, however, jumped into action and made a zealous effort to pull me back in. He practically dove to the point where only his legs were in the boat and his entire torso was coming at me. Well, I had already started to take a huge stoke with my right arm (the arm I was holding my paddle in—not by the T-grip but by the middle) and I managed to basically punch my boss with the paddle, right in the face.

During the ensuing commotion, he pulled me back onto the raft and we both fell on the floor. I looked over at him, and he had a nice sized raspberry under his eye. It was not good. It started to turn colors within a few minutes. He was rubbing it, and his wife kept telling him not to touch it. I felt really really bad because not only did I smack my boss in the face—I did it with my paddle like the guides said to watch out for. Peter though, quickly explained he played hockey all his life, has had tons of black eyes and has even broken his nose 4 times. He didn’t let me worry about it, but there was a time for about 10 minutes I thought I was gonna get fired. By the end of the trip, everyone was making fun of me for whacking him, but as it turned out, by work the next day, he ended up not even getting a black eye (there was just a little scratch were it was bleeding).

The other really memorable part of the trip was the cliff jumping. It was so much fun. We pulled our rafts to a bank and climbed up this rock (maybe 15 feet—hey, it was still kinda scary) and we took turns jumping off it. There were about 20 Japanese people in other boats there, so we had to take turns. My buddies from the other raft were the first ones to jump. Jonathan from work yelled “japanese101” as he jumped—the German guys yelled “Germany!!” and when it was my turn I jumped and yelled “Bansai!!!” which I was told got huge laughs from the Japanese people, and huge forehead smacks from Peter, Kishimoto-san, and a few other in our group.

The rafting trip was really fun, and we even intentionally capsized our raft at the end. The trip was a great break from the stress of Tokyo, and it was nice to be in a new part of Japan. We later found out that just after we had gotten on the water, the earthquake hit Tokyo and did huge amounts of damage. Everyone I know was fine, and I didn’t even feel the aftershock a few hours later. The company trip gets a thumbs up; I mean where else can you smack your boss in the face and not get fired?