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Foursome
Kumi-Chan, Nomoto-san, Satoko and me early Saturday morning If you ask me, the best way to foster communication and understanding between people is outdoor pursuits. It’s probably just getting together with people who have the same interests but there’s something about being outside that allows you to commune with people in ways that don’t actually require much oral communication.
My case in point is last weekend when I went trekking with my friend, Satoko, and two of her adventurous friends. I met Satoko last month through my friend Lucy. When I mentioned my love of walking she was quick to tell me about her friend Nomoto-san (or Mr. Nomoto), a sea-kayaking instructor, and his traveling companion Kumi-chan, who are walking around Kagoshima Prefecture. Though not everyone can be so lucky as to have 2 months free to spend walking the Kagoshima coastline, we decided to join Nomoto-san and Kumi-chan for a weekend.
Satoko (a.k.a. Sato-chan), Nomoto-san and Kumi-chan are the kind of free spirits you rarely meet in the version of Japan I’ve experienced. Satoko has been everywhere from India to Finland while Nomoto-san and Kumi-chan have both been to various places including Western Canada in pursuit of their hobbies, sea-kayaking and hiking.
On Friday,
Ehime Port
View from our "campsite" Satoko and I drove from Shibushi to a small west-coast town called Oura where we were picked up by Satoko’s friends Satomi and Osamu and driven even further into the remote countryside to a tiny fishing town called Ehime. We arrived in Ehime quite late and camped out in the town cemetery after a round of canned beer, Satsuma-age (fried fish-cakes) and Castella cake kindly sent by my Nagasaki friends Hiroki and Masafumi (see last blog entry).
From the outset everyone got along well, in spite of the fact that I was the junior by at least 12 years (we all share the sign of the dog!) and none of us spoke the other’s language beyond a beginner level.
Our journey started on Saturday morning when we got off to an early start and trekked along the coastal road to a shochu factory and museum where we enjoyed some early-morning shochu tasting and picked up our fifth party-member for the day, Kariyama-san. We then climbed over Nomadake (Mt. Noma) to arrive in Kasasa town where we stopped at the Kasasa Ebisu inn for the night. This turned out to be Kariyama-san’s workplace and even though we weren’t renting
Ehime
Could it be Hawaii? a room they were very gracious in allowing us to camp out on their lawn and didn’t even charge us to use their onsen to wash up. After a quick tour of the local wind-generator museum we bathed, set up our tents and sat down to a beautiful dinner at the inn’s riverside restaurant.
We had to stretch the time a little after dinner since we were all ready for sleep by 7:30 so we retreated to our camping area and concluded our night drinking shochu and eating S’mores (which I try to introduce to all my Japanese friends as we can buy the ingredients here!).
Everyone was up early again the next morning after an extremely windy night (at one point during the night I dreamed that my tent got blown over only to wake up and discover that it was indeed rocking) and we set off this time around 8 am with Kariyama-san driving us to the precise place where we had finished the day before. There we met “Inodon,” who replaced Kariyama-san as our fifth member.
From Kasasa we stuck to the coastline on a mostly flat road stopping along the way for some
divinely fresh Satsuma-age (see description above), photo ops and snacks. Our final destination for the day was to be the Sunset Bridge (pronounced “Sanset Buridji” by the Japanese) in Fukiage town. We held off eating until we got there so were famished by the time we arrived. I really enjoyed my lunch of black sugar cake (think of a very light molasses) and S’mores ingredients.
After lunch “Inodon,” Satoko and I left the group with Osamu who had come to drive us back to Satoko’s car. Despite feeling a little sore and tired from sleeping on he thard ground (I ditched my yoga-cum-sleeping-mat to lighten my pack) I mostly felt exhilarated from the weekend. This was what I had been hoping to tap into when I came to Japan - beautiful nature and dynamic people to see it with. While we were hiking, the long silences borne out of not sharing the same language or culture didn’t matter. What mattered was that we were all there with the same purpose: making it to the next break spot, food stop or campsite.
Sometimes I wonder whether I would be staying another year if I had met people like this
earlier on but I doubt it would have changed much. Looking back at the last 9 months and the number of things I’ve done here in Kyushu, I don’t think I’ve left a year’s worth more stuff to discover. Though my post-JET plans are loose, I have decided to stick around Japan for the month of August to explore Hokkaido prefecture, in the north, which is said to have some spectacular hiking (and cool weather) in the summer. Hopefully I’ll leave having met more people on the northern trails like the ones I’ve met down here.
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Dave MacKillop
non-member comment
hiking
Emilie: looks like you had a grand hike. good to know that you found some kindred free spirits in Japan. D.