We drove south from Takamatsu city (see previous blog), and into Tokushima prefecture. This was the part of the trip my students were most excited that I was doing, because their mum was born and raised there. We were also really excited to see the mountains, have a nice time in the hot springs and then, the day after, to have our first experience rafting.
Tokushima was going to be fun for sure, but our buzzing was dimmed as soon as the sat nav told us to turn off the expressway over an hour before we were due to arrive at our destination. In the pitch black night, we started on a trail through the mountains. At first, it was not so bad, just a bit dark and Sammy had to take it easy, but gradually it worsened. The road conditions became basically unmaintained. Any trace of white paint was gone and the sheer drops either side of the car were only made worse by the thick pine trees looming overhead. The width of the road was almost exactly the same as the car and all I could do was grip my seat in fear, turn down the music and breathe through the whole thing; reassuring Sammy that it was okay and counting down the minutes until our arrival at the hotel. Neither of us dared to say any of the things we were thinking. What would we do if a car came in the opposite direction? What would we do if there’s a bear? What would we do if it started raining? We didn’t want to jinx anything. Instead we just let our hearts race, took our time and hoped for the time it would be over and all this would be a silly story that we could all laugh about. Luckily, that time is now, although maybe it’s too soon to see the humour yet.
Upon arrival at our hotel, I began to cry. We both just gave each other a long hug and I praised Sammy for his incredible driving skills. Without him, we wouldn’t have been screwed for sure. We’d paid for the best room the hotel had, the suite overlooking Oboke Gorge, but upon arrival, we couldn’t see anything outside. We knew we’d have to get up early to really make the most of it. That night though, we weren’t worried about that. We set an alarm and forgot all about our stresses, getting changed into our yukata swiftly before we headed down to the hot springs. We let the water melt away the knots in our shoulders. Online, I hadn’t noticed if the hotel had told us that the outside hot springs also overlook the gorge, but if it did, I didn’t notice, so it was a wonderful surprise when I realised. The sound of the fast flowing stream alongside the gentle trickling of the onsen created the greatest atmosphere. To say it was peaceful was an understatement.
Back in our room, we ate one of our bento boxes that we’d picked up earlier (see previous blog post for the cafe details). There were many side dishes and a big mountain of brown rice. Sammy basically swallowed everything whole, he ate it so fast, but I didn’t have my appetite after the stress of the mountain road. I ate what I could, it helped that it was really delicious. Sammy got a lemon sour from the vending machine and we opened another orange/mikan juice that we’d bought in Ehime (see my blog post 2 days ago for more details on that,) whilst we took in the beautiful suite. The room was gorgeous, definitely worth the money and although we wanted to use all the amenities to their fullest, we were both just very tired. Getting into bed, we felt the luxurious bedding and just knew, “Yep. This is what you’re paying for.” Those linens were the best I had ever felt. I don’t usually sleep well, but I sunk into that bed like a bear cub hibernating for the winter. Snuggled up, I slept uninterrupted for six hours, a feat that is unheard of for me. It was beyond amazing.
The next morning I woke up just before six. I peeped through the blinds and watched the gorge and the mountains for around a quarter of an hour, before heading down to the onsen. It was even more beautiful in the daytime. Back in the room, we opened up the blinds fully to take in the view whilst getting ourselves ready for our morning activities. We had to be at the rafting place by nine, but it was only a fifteen or twenty minute drive, so we aimed to check out around half past eight. We had some more mikan juice, two varieties for breakfast, and ate some senbei, mixed nuts and dried fruit, as all we had for breakfast was our snacks (due to the fact I can’t eat anything at the hotels) and we figured we had to at least have something before doing water sports.
We arrived on time, filled out the forms the company gave us, and chilled in their lounging area overlooking the river for about an hour as we waited for the other pair we were supposed to be rafting with. They arrived just after ten, we all got wet suited up and went down to have our health and safety lesson thing before heading out onto the water in the raft. The whole experience was so much fun. I wish we had more time to do the whole day experience, not just the half day. However, the time we had was amazing. We got to swim in the river and jump from the rocks into the water as well as have some really fun time amongst the rapids and things in the raft itself. The company we went with was called Happyraft. I would definitely recommend them. Our instructor was very friendly yet professional. He had a way of giving instructions that was direct without being abrupt or harsh. I wholeheartedly believe our amazing experience was because of his great skill as an instructor. Like teaching, there are many people who do this kind of profession overseas just to get to experience a new country, not because they are any good at the job, but this guy was not like that at all! He was made to be an instructor! It was in his nature, you could tell and we had the best time because of him so, yeah, I highly recommend Hashimoto and Happyraft in general.
I was very surprised that the rafting wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be. Yes, it can be dangerous if you don’t have the right equipment, guidance or instructor, but we had all those things so it wasn’t as dangerous as it first seemed. However, I did almost break all of my fingers, but that was through no fault of the rafting and more to do with human error. The other woman we were rafting with, was pulling me into the raft after we went swimming, because she didn’t want to swim and the raft was much bigger than me so it was hard to climb into. Like she was supposed to, she pulled on my life jacket to get me inside, however my hand got stuck on the rope attached to the side of the boat. I was screaming in pain, and she was shouting over me like “I think you’re stuck on something!” and instead of stopping so we could assess what was stuck and things, she just pulled and pulled until I almost fainted from the pain. My entire hand was purple, instant bruises on all of my nail beds, knuckles and other finger joints, as well as on the back of my hand. I didn’t think I was going to be able to row, but I used the cool water as a cold compress and we rested until I could confirm if anything seemed broken and luckily it was not. The woman of course apologised, but she also kept repeating “I knew you were stuck on something” and I just smiled through the pain and cursed myself for not communicating better in the moment, because at the end of the day, my screams didn’t tell her that it was my hand. Thank goodness everything was alright in the end. This very much could have been a totally different story instead of a funny anecdote, like the mountain trail. It really did show me though that all the real danger in Tokushima, were in the places we’d never even considered.
Happyrat took some photos of us rafting, swimming and having fun, so I will put them down below with the picture of the yukata we got in the hotel and the view from our room. After rafting we headed south into Kochi prefecture for the final part of our trip, so those stories and details will be in my next blog post. For now though, I hope you are enjoying my blog updates. The next post will be the last one for a while, but I know these past ten have all kind of come in a row so I bet you’ll need a break haha.
