Adventure Sports and Outdoor Dance Parties

This weekend I went on a trip with about a dozen other Miyagi JETs to Gunma Prefecture to go canyoning and to attend a Full Moon Party. We drove down to Gunma, which took about 5 hours.

I was not familiar with canyoning before I went on this trip. (Note: The activity was canyoning. I did not go canoeing). Canyoning was described to me as 'a waterslide, but the slide is rocks.' Even though this description did not sound particularly fun, (or pleasant for that matter) I decided to go anyway. The description turned out to be fairly accurate, but canyoning was amazing.

We went to the canyoning place on Saturday morning and were greeted by a bunch of crazy kiwis (and some crazy Aussies, and one crazy Hawaiian) who ran the place and facilitated the trips. After signing waivers in which we all put down each others' cell phone numbers as emergency contacts, we were faced with our first challenge--putting on all the gear. We were given 2 wetsuits each and sent to changing rooms to attempt to pull them on. After much struggling and groaning, one by one we all succeeded. At this point we put on the special shoes we were given and made our way outside don the rest of our gear: a harness, a life jacket, a helmet, and gloves. Once properly suited up, we all waddled over to a bus and had a short ride to the river.

We all climbed down the gorge and into the river. After a brief safety lecture on the importance of bent knees and straight arms, we were off. We slid down some currents and some waterfalls feet first and others head first (Superman style). One rather large waterfall involved the use of ropes and carabiners for safety. At the bottom of that one was a rather deep pool. Here some of us participated in another challenge. It involved climbing out of the river gorge, climbing over the railing of a bridge and sitting on a platform swing. The swing was then pulled out over the center of the pool. Then the participant had to hold on to a bar above them and pull their weight off the swing. The swing was pulled away and the participant was left to hang over the river and let go to free fall into the water! We also jumped off cliffs/waterfalls, swung on a vine into the river, and had a splash fight with our helmets.

When it was over we went back to their facility and struggled to remove our wetsuits. Afterwards, some of us went to a beautiful swimming hole in the river nearby and hung out for a while. Some people played on a rope swing there and dove off of large rocks. But I was done with the adventure part of the day and was moving into the chilling out part. The water was cold but the air was hot so it was great.

Some parts of our group went to an onsen, while others went back to the place we were staying to take a nap. A few of us decided to stay at the canyoning place, which had a little bar and was just a good place to chill out. In the evening we had a yakiniku (BBQ) party for dinner and went back to the place we were staying to chill out before the full moon party.

This little town has a big outdoor dance party every full moon. It was a 5 minute walk from where we were staying. There were 3 stages with DJs. The music wasn't the type that I'm normally into, but I had a bottle of wine and I like being outside, so it was quite good. Lots of people dancing, some playing with glowsticks, and others spinning fire (including one of the guys in our group). At some point around 3 am or so, all of the people in our group spontaneously go together. Some of us started a massage chain, which 2 Japanese girls joined for a minute. They didn't quite get the concept because they were dancing in the massaget line. And then they left and started taking pictures of us. They probably think that its a crazy gaijin (foreigner) dance or something.

Sunday we made the long drive back and luckily it was a three-day weekend, so I spent today resting my aching muscles and joints. Canyoning was so fun and very scary. It's something that I will either never do again or will be much more adventurous next time I go.