Continuing on about Nawang and Rigo's Excellent Adventures in Japan...  another highlight of our action packed 2-weeks together included a rafting trip with the Happy Raft company down the clear waters and challenging rapids of the Yoshinogawa River.  The Yoshinogawa is the second longest river on Shikoku Island, it's 194 km long and spans across all four prefectures on the Island.  It is regarded as one of the three greatest rivers of Japan along with the Tone and the Chikugo, and is nicknamed Shikoku Saburō (Saburō is a popular name given to third sons in Japan).  After the last night of the Awa Odori Festival, we set off at 11 A.M. Sunday morning to the small town of  Iwahara, Ootoyo-cho located in the middle of Shikoku Island.  Happy Raft has many adventure options including, One-Day rafting, Canyoning and combinations of the two, but due our time constraints we chose the Half-Day Oboke course.  Oboke is the name given to the rafting canyon, which means in short, big danger.  Ironically, Oboke just happens to be the middle name of Bani, an Australian friend of David my co-worker who decided to join us on our journey.  With a video camcorder in-hand, Bani, a.k.a. "Big Danger" documented our experiences, including some of his own dangerous highlights.  Words are hard to epress how much fun rafting was, and although I admit I am not much of an extreme sports person, this was a lot of fun and I definitely plan to take a crack at the One-Day course in the future!  Thanks to Bani, I don't have to write too much more about the experience, because he made a YouTube video of it!  Just a small disclaimer, when Bani asks me, "Can you tell us about this shirt of yours?" I thought he said, "... about this trip of yours?"...  That wild outback Australian accent will get you every time...  :)

 

Note: For more information about Happy Raft, see their website at www.happyraft.com