May 31 concert in the mountains

In the past few days I have seen some wonderful and unusual things. Today however, may have taken the cake so to speak. We had a pretty easy day here at Uwajima. Tonight we would attend a concert to celebrate the full moon, and the arrival of Hokule’a. This concert would take place up in the mountains, in this secluded forest. The forest was absolutely beautiful, with tall trees all around. There is a large cabin to the left on the hill, just in front of the main road. To the right you see a sign, it says don’t feed the monkeys (actually it had a cute cartoon drawing of a monkey, with a big X on it). Then there were steps made of stone that zig zagged down to the camp sight slash concert area. Before he camp sight there was a bridges that crossed this beautiful river, with boulders over 10 feet tall and wide.

As you continued down you could walk up to the camp/concert area, or go down to the left where there was a short walking path. Heidi, Kaiulani and I decided to go exploring down the path to the right. This path followed the river for the most part, and was really breath taking. As the sunset we headed over to the concert area. Now this was very interesting, even Kana and her Japanese friends had not seen anything like this before. It was more new age to them. There were a series of performances on a beautiful wooden stage, with the mountains and other cabins as the backdrop. The first performance was some singing and dancing. As it got dark, the next performance came up. At first you heard the beat of taiko drums, and then on a separate stage you saw fire dancing. Some were twirling sticks of flames, other rings of flame. There were different types of singers, some folk. There was even a lady playing a xylophone, and wailing/singing at the same time, some improv melodic tune. They had provided us with home cooked meals, and pizza.

That night also happened to be Kana’s birthday. This is the second voyage where I have been with Kana on her birthday. They turned off all the flood lights, lit the candles on her cake, and brought it to the front stage on a kayak. We all sang happy birthday, and she blew out her candles. The MC then presented the cake to her, and actually put her face into it. Poor Kana. She took it rather well and laughed the whole thing off. I’m sure she will chalk this one up to another memorable birthday.

June 1, 2007

This would be a day of exploration and trial and error. Heidi, Imai and I wanted to see a different part of Uwajima. Actually to be more accurate Imai had his lonely planet guide, and also had visited the tourism center and found another place to go. We would try to visit Yakushidani Gorge. This area had well maintained paths, with different rock formations; it was more of a work of art (or nature for that matter). This place is tucked in the mountains, a 30 minute bus ride up from the area we were staying at. Let me tell you it was a challenge to figure out the kanji that matched the place we wanted to go. We found an easy character and used that as the marker to look for on the bus.

The challenge was figuring out where to get off. We figured it should be easy since it was the last stop on the bus route. The bus stops in the middle of road, with no apparent entrance to the gorge in sight. Using sign language we figured it was a walk up the road to the area that we wanted to get to. We find the area, look at the tourist map, written in Japanese, and figure out which route to take on the hike. This place was beyond description. Trees that extend to what seems the sky, steep rock formations, with paths that meander both up and down and side to side. Since the hike was along the river, there was all sorts of bridges that went up and down, and one that even made about a 110 degree angle over to the other side. My favorite water fall was Yukiwa-no-Taki. This waterfall must have been at least about 6 stories high; we were at the base of it where it drained into the pond. The water was not flowing very heavily, but enough to glance over the rocks, and curve down. The water had this sheen, and would come apart into three different sections, and then merge again toward the bottom. To say the least it was a nice relaxing day, and a much needed break.

June 2, 2007

During our stay we would be treated by Mr. Mizuguchi (the spokesperson for the Ehime Maru tragedy) on several occasions. He first treated the entire crew to this magnificent dinner, which was not necessary, but much appreciated. It was by far one of the most laughing I have done in a while. Today he would take a small group of us, with another official serving as our guide, to Shimanto River. This would be about a 30 minute drive from our place in Uwajima. We were told that the Shimanto River was one of the cleanest rivers in Japan. The river has really high river bank walls, but currently is not flowing at full blast since rainy season is just starting. They have two levels of bridges one really really high about 30 feet, and the other about 10 feet above the river surface. The 10 foot bridge is made of cement, one lane wide, and has no guard rails. We were told that they don’t place guard rails because if they did when the river flowed over the bridge, it would just push the whole bridge over. We stopped and spent about 30 min to an hour at the river, walking and soaking in the environment. We then drove to a nearby hotel that was sitting over the river, listened to classical music and sipped tea. Let me tell you I really needed this trip, and it helps put things into perspective. Thank you Mr Mizuguchi for taking the day to spend it with us, it really means a lot to all of us.