Not Just Ninjas

It was a weekend of natural adventures at the Boegeman household. Autumn has arrived, which means gold fields and smoke in the air as the rice is harvested. Saturday we decided it was high time to hit a spot on the map that we’ve been eyeing for over a month: an series of gorges and mountain lakes just a bit north and east of us.

We got in our still-not-legal car and started driving via back roads in the general direction of the gorge. On the way we passed a lovely little waterfall, a rather large Shinto shrine at the top of an impressive stairway, and a huge World Heritage center with museum exhibits about the region. In the heart of the Shirakami mountains is a virgin beech forest that’s apparently one of the largest in the world.

We didn’t make it all the way up into the center of the mountain range, but we did drive quite a way on a startlingly curvy road full of one-lane bridges and the ubiquitous Japanese convex mirrors at every curve since it was impossible to see around corners. Just as we decided to turn around, we stumbled upon a trailhead that was accompanied by the enticing sound of rushing water in the distance.

I have to say, Japanese forest trails are f*cking awesome. They somehow strike the perfect balance between maintaining the natural beauty of the trail while still appointing it with all the comforts of civilization. Much of the trail is “paved” with wood chips; steep sections are laid with lovely little wooden stairways which are easy to walk on but almost look like they are a natural part of the forest; wet and mucky bits are “paved” with raised wooden walkways; chasms are spanned by bridges that are alternately tasteful and impressive depending on the size of the dropoff.

The forest was lush with infinite shades of green and impressive huge trees with convoluted trunks growing around each other. Japanese wildlife seems generally more “interactive” than the American equivalents. Butterflies and dragonflies fly at your face constantly, and sometimes just land on you. Steph found a frog (toad?) that was not exactly happy to be picked up but didn’t make much of an effort to get away.

At the bottom of the trail we found our goal; a lovely crystal-clear mountain stream cascading over a million rocks, amid the first few trees turning red for fall. In a couple months this will all be buried under meters of snow, so we’re enjoying it while we can.

Sunday was a different story altogether. Somehow I let Steph talk me into signing up for an English-teaching adventure at the Akita city zoo. We heard through a friend of a friend of a co-worker that an English school in Akita was looking for English speakers to accompany the kids for a day of animal spotting and games at the zoo. I’m a terrible teacher, and I have a tendency to be tongue-tied around kids in any case, so this wasn’t exactly my bag. Not to mention that I rather expected the zoo to be full of depressing tiny concrete cages full of miserable animals.

Well, I was mostly pleasantly surprised.

This wasn’t the San Diego Zoo, but it was not nearly as bad as I had been fearing. There was very little concrete, and the big animals had a decent amount of space to roam around. It was actually pretty impressive how close we were able to get to the animals. I saw (that’s right) lions, tigers, bears, and reindeer face-to-face; the monkey mountain had over 50 monkeys (including at least 20 babies) running around and being entertaining. The only animals in the zoo that were boring were the kangaroos.

As for the English-teaching bit; there were about 5 Americans, a Brit, and a Canadian along for the ride. Each was assigned to a group of kids; Steph got the 4-5 year-olds and I got the 9-12s. We basically had to give little spiels about the animals and administer a quiz based on the information. It wasn’t particularly exciting for anyone but hey, free zoo trip.

After an hour at the zoo it was lunch and game time. This was actually pretty entertaining.  Of course the best part was Hoho.  This is the 2.75 year-old daughter of the friend of the friend of the co-worker from whom we heard about this gig.  Hoho was the most adorable and irrepressible girl and she had a pair of killer ladybug boots.  Hoho’s parents named her that because — to quote Dave Barry: I am not making this up — it is easy to pronounce and sounds like Santa Claus’s signature line.  Apparently Hoho’s mother’s name (Chihiro) is often mispronounced, and she didn’t want her daughter to have to deal with that annoyance.  Awesome.  Chihiro and Hoho were great fun to hang out with (not to mention living near a great restaurant) so we hope we will get to see more of them in the future.

After 2pm we had the rest of the day to ourselves.  I have to admit that my main reason for accepting this zoo gig was to have an excuse to visit the “big city” and have some food and experiences that aren’t available in Noshiro.  The first thing we did after the zoo was hit Starbucks for a real honest-to-god mocha.  Akita prefecture has exactly one Starbucks, and we go there whenever we’re in the city.

The rest of the day was not really blog-worthy.  We hit a couple of stores to look for shoes.  I’ve been wearing nothing but tennis shoes and thongs for three months and I’d really like to have something a bit nicer for when we go out to dinner and stuff.  Turns out shoes are butt-expensive in Japan, but I guess that’s no surprise.  We also hit a travel agent to ask about tickets to Indonesia for the holidays.  It wasn’t as cheap as we were hoping, but we do have tickets now so it’s official: we’re going to Java and Bali for Christmas and the New Year! After that we went to dinner at what I believe is the only microbrewery in Akita. Their beer is good but expensive, and unfortunately the food is only so-so.  Oh well!  It was worth a try.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Nature, Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.