Tuesday, September 8, 2009-

What a great day! Just when I thought I couldn’t be happier that I was placed in a fishery school (two weeks ago I didn’t even know such a thing existed), today happened.

At the end of 4^th hour I found myself headed over to the fishery building. I had been told what was coming, so I could hardly contain my excitement as I joined my classmates in changing into our swimming suits and river gear preparing for my first school kayaking adventure. The kids in my homeroom have been so great to me, we’re already making plans to head into Utsunomiya one of these weeks, to go fishing for ayu in the Nakagawa, and one of these nights hit up the flashiest building in town, “The Grand Bowl.” A giant bowling alley that lights up half of the city at night with its enormous neon bowling pin raised above the sea of tiled roofs. So today when it was just our homeroom for two hours I was very content as we loaded up two big trucks and simply jumped onto the back to ride a kilometer or two west until we came to a small temple and two houses tucked away behind the rice fields, bamboo thickets and dense forests that define the countryside here.

Gearing Up - Excited to Hit the Water

Once we arrived everyone grabbed their very own kayak and we portaged a short path down behind the homes until we hit an incredibly secluded river and a tired old cement damn that had been built there.

I found out that it wasn’t the Nakagawa River, but one of its tributaries. I couldn’t care less, my twenty or so classmates and I spent two fantastic hours out on the river racing, splashing, practicing rolling a kayak, playing water polo and tag, and simply laughing. I couldn’t see a single house or car or telephone pole through the dense forest and it felt like we were much further from the town than we really were.

Me and Miki - nicknamed after Micky Mouse! Can you see it?

By the time we had to go back we were all wiped out, dripping wet, and impatient for our next trip. What a cool school!