Kimber, Maca and I woke up in the tatami room a little behind
schedule, I guess we really got used to those free days, so we had to
hustle to get to the train station on time. To our surprise when we
walked down to the tracks it looked like we were the first ones there.
Unfortunately this was not true, we were the last. We only took the
train one stop over, the stop near Ei-Chan’s house, and walked the rest
of the way.
Today wasn’t another free day, but it was a day
designated by Stapp as “Summer Vacation”. Our summer vacation in this
case was white water rafting. After putting on our wet suits and walking
the rafts to the river we divided up and hopped in. I was with Kimber,
Madison, Carter, Jack, and our river-guide Papa. The water wasn’t really
that rough, but I had so much fun! As we rafted down the river we were
mostly propelled by Papa, contrary to the other groups who all had to
row the entire time. This was mostly because he guided our rowing with a
“1, 2” call and at one point we got a little too into it, took over the
call, and went a little too fast.
After rafting for a while we
stopped to swim in a calmer section of the river. Before I could hop off
into the water Carter pushed me out of the raft. This started a chain
reaction of people pushing other people into the river. We rafted a
while more before taking a quick break to jump off a bluff cleverly
called the “jumping rock” by the guides. We finished out our raft after
an hour or so and walked the rafts back to the station we had come
from.
After rafting Stapp took us to Osho (Japanese Waffle House)
and bought lunch. Taking the trains to Osho made me a little more
nervous that usual because I had forgotten to bring my rail pass this
morning and was sneaking by the train station employees every time I
boarded a train. After lunch we had the rest of the day free. I was
exhausted so I took a much needed midday nap. I crashed the second my
head hit the pillow!
When I woke up around five I was so hungry.
Most of decided to go to the conveyor belt sushi restaurant that Ei-chan
had told us about. I was so happy when we finally found it after
winding through the streets of Kameoka. It was neat but super confusing
because all of the instructions were in Japanese. Every plate that went
by cost 100 yen, and if you wanted something special you could order it
on the tablet at the table and it would be delivered via the upper
direct conveyor belt.
This was our last night in the Pony Hotel
for a while and Maca, Kimber, and I’s last night in the tatami room so
we all had to pack up our suitcases to leave for Toyota City in the
morning. While we packed, we watched “Dark Places” which is adapted from
the Gillian Flynn book. It wasn’t the best movie but I had a lot of
fun. We finally went to bed a little after midnight with all of our
laundry done and suitcases packed, ready to go to Toyota City!
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Read more from Stephanie at http://stephsadventuresabroad.tumblr.com/
Find out more about the U of A International Business in Japan program at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/wcobjapan
