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The Land of the Rising Sun
September 2008
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I got to share time with Noah Fraser from Reno, Nevada on a squirt boating vacation in Japan this September. Noah is a top squirt boater using both hand paddles and a regular paddle. He flew to Tokyo from San Fransisco and I from Pittsburgh- so we would meet and start our trip there. Noah even got a bonus day in Japan through the kind courtesy of our good friend Enomoto-san and my ‘fortuitous’ mistranscription of the arrival date when I told him when to book his tickets. Lucky guy! He got to get rested up and tour sections of Tokyo. Hopefully he’ll have a trip report covering his first day pretty well.
I was picked up at Narita Airport by my buddy and babysitter Taiki Sugawara. He’s a cool guy~
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Noah was finally able to solve the puzzle with a 20 second mystery where he dropped in on the high right side in this picture and then slowly travelled to the squeeze area at the top of the whirlpool at the downstream base of this island towards the left in the picture and then crossed the seam to the near side and travelled slowly down the right side of the seam until it finally played out. That’s about as good as humanly possible it seemed. Otherwise he had to settle for a lot of 12-14 seconders and I had my usual feast of 5 seconders.
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So we spent a few days at Boru-bas before the Squirtogether with different levels each day. Each level was challenging. It rained almost constantly as a typhoon was passing very close by. Still- our camp stayed dry and we really enjoyed our time there in the super clean water. This is one of the few rivers in Japan who’s flow is not dam-regulated. It’s called the Ketagawa and it flows from a wilderness area on the west flank of Mt. Fuji into the Tenryugawa on the south side of the Honshu island. Friday night people started showing up for the Squirtogether and by Saturday the place was busy with squirtboaters from all over Japan- maybe 30 altogether. Lots of old friends- fellow zombies- gathered:
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So- Noah-san has a lot of new friends now, including Hideo who had this amazing cell phone that doubled as a TV. Hideo is way up on tech stuff.
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And Takeda-san was there with his phenominal camera equipment. He’s a great photographer:
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So, Saturday the committee wisely selects a good mystery seam close to the campground for the venue. A lot of beginner squirtboaters were there and they had a great opportunity to become good intermediates. And that’s how it worked out! A lot of great progress was made. And the experts in the crowd tried to go the longest. Later that day we visited Boru-bas again and had a tough session where we could only get meager downtime out of many tries. Still it was fun to try to solve it out and we did get some good ones. But- at this higher level- it was hard to ride the Broken Bus.
Saturday night, the party starts. Noah and I had bought a little whiskey for the event- but before we could even try to get drunk enough- we were talked into eating little fish on sticks called “Auii”. These are fighting fish that are hooked with long poles with no reels- using other Auii as bait (they fight the prey fish) and then the intended meal is snagged with a second hook. We had a whole mess which was caught by Takeda-san.
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The Mighty Toru is not only the reigning Squirtogether Champ- but he also happens to be a perfect cooker of fish.
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The Auii have to be cooked just so....
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So we just lost our minds and bit into those little guys. We’d get drunk later- but would we respect ourtselves in the morning...?
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The rest of the meal was great too and featured grilled wild boar, potatoes, mushrooms and sprouts. It was way cho oishii and there was way plenty. Here- Soko-chan fires up some mushrooms:
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And then “To all a good night” as I slip away to my tent with a bit of a whiskey buzz and fond memories of the funny auction we had.
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Ow! The morning after was a slow start....
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The big news in the squirt world in Japan is that the Shy KOR has arrived! The first one belongs to Su-san who was pleased with it. He used it to come in third in the competition and he’s even older than I am!
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Mo-chan did not take home a trophy because she elected to compete against the men.
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Before we left the Squirtogether the local paddlers honored Noah by letting him name the competition spot where we played. He came up with the great name of the “Mystery Shrine” because we were in sight of a Shinto shrine.
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That Sunday night we spent at the house of Esper who was at the Squirtogether. We met his parents, wife, and son. They live in the awesomest house I’ve ever been in in Japan! His wife and two year old son amused us with some sumo wrestling. They were really gracious hosts and we very much enjoyed our time there. The Monday after the event we sampled ‘Terrapin Station’ on the Nagaragawa. It was pretty unusable and the word is that the river bottom has changed since Gabe-san played here. Still- it was nice to be on the water again.
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Taiki didn’t even suit up as the Station just wasn’t serving up the magic.
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So- we elected to go to the ‘Hideaway’- which was a great spot close by that just needed a little less water- and the river was dropping fast. So we decided to stop and see the famous Kona surfing wave where many rodeos have happened. There we met Aya-chan and her husband Li-san who happened to be friends with Atsuko, whom I hadn’t seen in years. Atsuko could join us! Soon we were all killing time visiting a beautiful shrine nearby near a sacred waterfall. And Kuma-chan even showed up in his fancy dancing outfit which he uses in the all-night dance festival in the nearby town of Gifu.
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And then on to visit Nagoya and our hosts Satomi and Yoshiro Ono, who own “Fun Forever” ~Japan’s importers of Paul Schreiner kayaks and also old friends of mine.
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That night we went to a Chubu Dragons baseball game and had a lot of fun drinking beer and cheering. They lost at the last minute- but it was really fun.
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The next day we toured Nagoya some more and saw these great dancers!
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And we went to Oasis21 - a cool place to hang out and see various music acts. It’s multi-level and extends down into the underground city of Nagoya.
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