Day 6: Satsumasendai – Izumi Camping

[post of Monday 13^th of August]

So far the craziest night since we arrived in Japan.

We left Amy’s house with great mood, refreshed, and ready to travel. Today is a medium-length stage; we hope to go through 60 km down the river and then back up along the coast. In the morning we crossed the Japanese green valleys, with rice fields on both side, sheltered by high mountains behind them. Once we reached the coast, we thought we weren’t going to leave its side for the rest of the day. How wrong we were! We left a paradisiacal beach (when God created Heaven he did not think in the Americas, he thought in Japan), and started to go up and down for km, without having another single glimpse of the sea. The parts uphill are very hard and, at first, we tried to cope with them as we could; we made the last ones just walking and pulling the bike.

Along the road, we observed the fauna that inhabits this island. Autochthonous insects are always peculiar; they tend to either gigantism or dwarfism. In the case of Japan, bugs are as big as a fist. Some of them are gorgeous, like the black butterfly with white dot and more than 15 cm wingspan. Centipedes and spiders are as fascinating as butterflies.  Soon we’ll see snakes too.

When dawn gets closer, and it’s time to think where to sleep, a storm catches us in the middle of the road and we have to find shelter under a canopy nearby… for as long as to think that we might need to spend the whole night in there, or at least nearby, considering that a gang of ants has got the same idea. While we wonder, and wait under the canopy for the storm to stop, the door of the canopy opens up and a man on the car comes to us and, to our great surprise, he speaks English. He seems worry, when he asks us how we are doing and he gets even more preoccupied when we say that most probably we were going to spend the night out in the open. We think that, were not for the fact that the bikes didn’t fit into it, he would have asked us to stay with him inside the car.

Once the storm stops, we go on a bit more. There is a camping further ahead. In the past, while we prepared for the journey, we were told that Japanese camping are not worth a try, that they are too expensive and don’t have great facilities. Well, considering that if the rain gets this worst in the night too, we could be caught in a flood, we decided it was better to leave a sign of our location, hence we approached the camping.

The reception is empty, and we wait for quite a while. It seems no-one is around but, then, a Philippine woman shows up and asks us, in a loud and understandable English, how she can help us. Yasmin, that’s the name of our rescuer. She leaves to look for someone of the camping staff and, few minutes later, comes back with a young guy who doesn’t understand how we can think of sleeping in a tent with such a hot temperature and the high possibility of rain. We must have impressed him and, moved by pity, he offers us to camp for free… and since these Japanese think about everything, he tells us to camp beside Yasmin’s bungalow because she’s the only one in the camping able to speak English.

We set to prepare the tent when is nearly night. Suddenly, loads of Japanese surround us and help us to assemble the tent. They are Yasmin’s son and, a minute later, we see them, some ten kids, all trying to ride our bikes, switching on the lights, ringing the bike bell, opening up the saddlebags and laughing out loud. There is an adult with them, whom we call him José (that’s how it sounded his name in Japanese… more or less). With all the enthusiasm that you can find in someone inviting you to a pint of beer, he invites us to participate in a typically Japanese game, to beat the watermelon. Without even giving us the time to finish up the camp, they call us to join in the game. The kids start first, and then we follow. They blindfold and spin us; then they tell us to get the watermelon with the broom they put in our hands. The watermelon lays on the floor, and we have to follow their indications (in Japanese) on where our target is. Omoshiroi!!! [Japanese for “hilarious, great”]

Finally, the crazy people of the watermelon, Yasmin and her family invite us to dinner. We try Yasmin’s yakisoba [Fried noodles in sauce] and José’s BBQ. While we are still amazed by the kindness and enthusiasm of these wonderful people, the kids take our hand; pull us toward the nearby meadow on the shout “¡Hana-bi! ¡Hana-bi!” Firework.  We drank, we laughed, we talked, understanding each other as we could, and we enjoyed how the parents got caught in the happiness of the kids… and we felt at home. We slept very little but we didn’t care. That was one of the best nights ever.