Hiking Adventure

Yuka came down Friday night and stayed until Sunday night. We went snorkeling and saw a pretty cool aquarium that had three whale sharks. It was a lot of fun, and the best part is that I'll see her again in 4 weeks.

Last night was our village festival. I was able to catch the end of it and witness the best firework show I have ever seen. I was thinking 'little village' = 'little fireworks'. Not at all. Simply amazing.

My supervisor is named Tachi (ta-chee). He told me last week that on Monday, I need to start showing up at the office at 9. This morning, I dressed in a polo, slacks, dress shoes, and showed up with my computer, thinking I would be sitting at a desk going over lesson plans. Tachi takes a look at my shoes and tells me I need to change, cause we're going hiking. Everyone else was dressed similar to me, except they were wearing tennis shoes. By everyone, I mean various people in the education system, so teachers and other administration people.

A bus pulls up, and Tachi drives everyone around to educate us in some of the local landmarks, which were mainly shrines, but we also went to a waterfall. During lunch, I learned that the "hike" we were going on was to see "world war holes". One of the teachers spoke English decently, so between his English, my Japanese, and hand gestures, we communicated.

On a side note, his everyday English is really good, but when he was trying to translate to me what was being said about this shrine, or that rock, he struggled with vocabulary. This is where I came in. What does 葬式 mean? Oh, funeral. What does 宗教 mean? Oh, religion. Glad to see three years at UF has taught me nothing about having a simple conversation, but I know these kinds of words. Thanks, Uotate.

So after lunch, we take a bus halfway up a mini-mountain and get out to begin our hike. I was expecting hiking as in trail, where two people or more could walk side by side with signs scattered about describing a certain tree or view.

How wrong I was.

Tachi and another elder man get out of the bus holding machetes. We start walking and there is a giant wire fence blocking the road. We had to walk through the woods to get around it. That was just the beginning. Behind the fence, we walked a dirt path, and then suddenly, Tachi starts hacking at the foliage beside him and we step into the jungle. There is no trail, only bamboo, trees, and wet leaves.

I have no tennis shoes. My shoes are skateboard shoes, so the soles are flat. I do not think I can describe how inconvenient my shoes and clothes were for this trip. We were climbing up a mountain, creating our own trail as we went. I slipped all over the place. Other people were falling. One elder lady did not go, because apparently the last time she did it, she BROKE HER LEG. We grabbed at roots and branches to pull ourselves up and up. Several places, we had to jump over little gaps, where, had I slipped, I would have easily broken my neck. Another thing to picture is that all these people are similarly dressed, and twice as old as me. They seemed to enjoy saying 「危ないね？」 ('dangerous isn't it?'), followed by laughter, after every slip and jump. Another 'humorous' thing about this trip is that I'm a head taller than everyone else, so the path Tachi was clearing was perfect for all the 5'5 tall Japanese people following him. I kept hitting my head on everything he missed. Parts of our trek took us through grass that was taller than me, and we had to be wary of the ハブ (habu), a poisonous snake that will KILL YOU.

During the hiking, the climbing, and the slipping, I was thinking about how I should act when we reach the 'world war holes'. Being American and being shown bomb holes created by your country, do I just look ashamed? do I bow? do I get on my knees and beg for forgiveness before being disemboweled by one of the men holding machetes?

Well, it turned out that 'world war hole' was just bad pronunciation. We were touring 'wild boar holes', or wild pig traps: deep holes in the ground resembling wells without the concrete. I learned Ogimi has many wild pigs in the jungle, and these traps were over 50 years old. One person told me that sometimes a pig leaves the jungle and will run through the street. I made a Ring joke about Sadako climbing out, and everyone seemed to appreciate it.

There were a total of 7 holes, and I think it took us about an hour and a half. When we got to the last one, I thought we would have to turn around, but thankfully, we stepped into civilization, and we were magically back to where we had parked. My shirts were soaked in sweat, my khakis and shoes were muddy, but it was actually a lot of fun.