White water

Today I went with a couple of AJET folks down to Kochi Prefecture to the Yoshino River for some whitewater rafting. I was suuuper excited, since I've wanted to go for quite some time. Our group chose to do the half day tour, since today was a sunday and most of us have work tomorrow (or have to wake up early), and from okayama it's about a two hour drive (though you can get there by train as well). The half day we went on started at 2, went until 5ish. There was a place we went for lunch that had pretty tasty gyuudon and felt like we were eating at this quaint little, almost rustic cottage house run by grandmas. Dinner was at a road side ramen/katsu shop. So freaking tasty. I think that's one of the things I wish i had a car for.

I had no idea driving in Japan was so expensive! Oh my god. The bridge toll to cross the Seto-Ohashi? 3,300 yen. WTF. That's like, about $40 with the current (crappy) exchange rate. FOR A BRIDGE TOLL. I won't complain about the bay bridge being $6 any more.

I didn't expect there to be so many mountains down there; it seemed like that area was pretty much all mountains and valleys. It was absolutely gorgeous, and though the day started off kind of rainy and drizzly, the rain let up by the time we got going for a really nice day. It wasn't too humid (for once), it wasn't too hot, it wasn't really cold. It was nice. :) We were split into two different cars going down; I was in the car without a GPS since I had my wifi and my iPad. Never thought it'd come in so handy like this! Very glad I bought it. :)

We went with a company called Happy Raft; they have a bunch of international guides and stuff, so we were speaking English the whole time we were down there. It was ridiculously fun. I love water sports :D The river we were on was only a 3 (out of 6) so it wasn't too too bad, though there were a couple of fun white patches. We didn't flip. We got stuck a couple times, and very nearly flipped. Our boat was getting pulled into the calm space behind a rock and we were starting to lean towards there... so our guide had all of us move over to the opposite side, and thankfully, we managed to balance ourselves out and break free. there were a bunch of calm stretches we got to play games on. Every one of us went for a swim, but nobody fell out without someone putting an effort into it. We also managed to rodeo flip our boat, head over end. That was pretty sweet. We had a huge boat too (since there were 8 of us).

t'was loads of fun; I definitely want to do this again! Interestingly enough, I did get injuries. Blisters, for one. But it wasn't from the rafting. It was from putting on the wet suit. I put it on BACKWARDS by accident, since I'm used to having the zipper in the back (that's what it was like for scuba diving). So I got to put it on twice. Now I have two blisters: one on each ring finger. Stings like a mofo. My shoulders are also really sore, but that's not from paddling. It's from being hauled back into the boat several times. Seriously, that and getting on the wetsuit were the hardest parts of this trip.

I haven't felt this sore in a while. I didn't even feel this sore after fuji or the six hour bike ride. This is like, a deep kind of achey sore that makes me feel rather... old. And tired. But I totally want to do it again sometime. :D

Hopefully I'll be able to get pictures up sometime. One of us bought the CD with pictures on it... so I suppose eventually it'll make it up here somehow.