Oboke

The one thing nobody tells you about is the urban sprawl in Japan, in some places it thins out a bit, but generally it is just town, after town, after town.  To get away we jumped off Honshu (Japan's main island) onto Shikoku. After a short stay in Takamatsu - as blogged previously - we hired a car and drove off into the mountains and headed for Oboke.



Red arrow points to Oboke.

As it was Adam's responsibility to organise the Honeymoon, I really should not have been surprised when white water rafting was added to the list of activities. I was pretty aprehensive about getting in a rubber dinghy and propelling down a raging river - the thought crossed my mind that he was trying to "off" me on our honeymoon...a tactic to get at my millions...

Luckily he picked an awesome location in the mountains where there are really steep mountains covered in Japanese Maple and cherry blossoms, so it made for a really nice break from the urbanisation that is Japan.




Oboke Gorge.


The really nice people at 'Happy Raft' including an Aussie bloke named Mezza and a Japanese guy named Taka (who learned English in Darwin and Broome from the locals whilst sleeping on a goon bag) made the whole white water rafting experience totally awesome.




Aussie Mezza, Japanese Taka, Adam and I.


In the afternoon we headed over to the Iya Valley, which is a really beautiful part of the world, to check out the vine bridge.  Apparently it was first built by Heike warriors fleeing the civil wars of the 12th century - now re-constructed every three years and reinforced with cable - it swings 10 metres above the Iya river.  Adam practically ran across it - whilst I carefully picked my way over. The main problem is that the planks where you put your feet are only two inches wide and are about 20 cm apart so you have to look down if you have small feet like me to make sure your foot doesn't fall through the gap.




Adam on the vine bridge.

There was no way I was going back over that bridge - so when I took this photo from the concrete road bridge - Adam was attempting a re-cross, only to get roused on by the attendant over loud speaker - neither of us speak Japanese but the message was loud and clear.