Crazy Weekend

Sorry for not talking to a lot of people over the weekend. A bunch of the young teachers invited me on a road trip to Shikoku, and Tokushima Prefecture. We left on Friday night. Keep in mind that only 3 out of the 12 spoke any English, and my Japanese isn't very good. So we left on Friday night, I have no clue whats going on but I jumped into a car and we started to drive. The first thing they wanted to do was make me a Japanese nickname, they ended up calling me Sen-chan... chan means young man and sen comes from the way you pronounce my name in Japanese, Bin-Sen-to. I was with a teacher nicknamed mugi-mugi, two girls hikari and atan. We stopped at the convenience store and stocked up on goodies and beer of course. We went to a ship in Osaka bay, we PARKED our cars inside the boat and we went along inside the boat to our sleeping areas. You see in order to get to Shikoku faster was to take a ferry across Osaka bay. It was so awesome I have never been on anything like that before. So we went on the top deck and laid out a blanket and in typical Japanese orderly fashion we started to introduce ourselves. After about 1 hour we came close to a HUGE bridge that connects an island to the city of Kobe. We passed right under the bridge. Oh by the way the bridge is called the Akashi-Kaiyo Bridge it is the longest suspension bridge in the world to date, as measured by the length of its center span 1,991 metres (6,532 ft). It was amazing to see at night. We slept and in the morning we woke up early went to our cars and began to leave the ship on our way to the new destination. We ended up in Tokushima and we parked and little did I know we were on the river suiting up in wet suits and jumping in a raft. We went white water rafting!! First off I am scared of water and I can't swim very well. They taught us how to rescue each other and how to swim to safety. The good thing was that I really didn't have the time to worry or be scared because you have to just do it. We would stop at some calm areas of the river and everybody would jump out and swim and play it was so awesome. We had lunch at some creek with a tent after 2 hours on the water. Then we set out again, we stopped at this area with some freaking huge cliffs and the guides told us to climb them. We didn't really think of why we were climbing the cliffs but we just were!! By the time I knew it I was at the tallest cliff many people had stopped at the smaller ones but a couple of us just kept going. So I peer off this cliff that had to be at least 30 feet high. Then the guide comes up to us and says, "well now that you're up here let me tell you how to get down!" LOL He tells us to hold our arms in a cross with one hand holding your nose and feet straight. Then he says ok jumP!! One guy goes before me, and then I get up there and he counts!!! ICHI!!!!! NIIIIIIII!!!! SAAAAAANNNN!!!!! (one two three) and I JUST jumped off!! It was freaking crazy and it felt so weird free falling and I landed in the water and I was so happy after I did that. Then we all watched every one taking turns jumping. After we finished we went to an Onsen (hot spring) and hopped in of course bare too!! haha It was really relaxing. We had dinner and played drinking games for the rest of the night. When we drove home I passed through Awaji Island and drove over the exact same bridge that we went under!! I got to see Kobe then we finally got home to Osaka. It was weird because I was glad to be back in my city. Well I will have pics of this soon because I'm an idiot and took my camera with the memory card left in the computer. So my friends will make a cd for me of all the pics. Sorry this is so damn long but it was a great weekend, and to think I've only been here 3 weeks. I'll try to make some calls tomorrow, see you !!! :)