Whitewater Rafting on the Yoshino River

Last weekend, I went with five friends to try whitewater rafting. We did a 2 hour float on the Yoshinogawa near Oboke with a company called Happy Raft. Besides the six of us, there were two guides and two Japanese guys. One guide and the Japanese guys manned a small raft, and the other guide had the somewhat challenging task of commanding the large raft full of foreign women. I say "challenging" not because we were particularly lazy or uncooperative, but because usually everyone was chatting so much that at times it was difficult for the guide to give us directions. He was a little too polite; when possible he would wait for us to stop talking, rather than interrupting our conversation. But sometimes he didn't have a whole lot of choice, like when we were approaching a rapid. Or when we were headed straight for a large rock. That happened a few times.

At the beginning of the tour, they outfitted us with wet suits, helmets, life jackets and paddles. We took a bus up the river to the starting point (only about 4 kilometers, I think), where we received a safety talk. Then we got into the rafts and practiced paddling for a while. It took some instruction before we got coordinated enough to set off. I forgot our guide's name, but he was a pretty nice guy. He didn't know much English but was happy to give us the commands in English anyways.

Safety talk. Note that we are all sitting in the formal and uncomfortable "seiza" position.

Large sections of the river were pretty calm, and we could get out of the raft and float around in the water. The others thought it was kind of a shock how cold it was when they first got in, but I didn't think it was all that bad. We definitely needed the wet suits, but it wasn't the kind of cold that makes your skin burn or your joints ache. Partway down the river, we made a stop at a very large group of rocks. We all climbed up the rocks, though it took a good deal of assistance from the guides, and then we took turns jumping into the water. I'm pretty terrible with estimating heights, but I think maybe it was about 20 feet high. It was high enough to be unsettling, certainly. I hesitated a bit, especially since the spot we were jumping from required you to stand balancing on two smallish, rounded rocks. But when the tour leader gave me a countdown, I jumped. It was pretty fun, although I was coughing and sputtering a good deal when I first came up. They gave us the option to climb back up and jump again, but the climb had been enough of a struggle the first time that I didn't really feel like attempting it a second. So I bobbed in the water (the life jackets were extremely buoyant) and watched some of the others jump a few more times. The Japanese guys took it as an opportunity to show off.

Getting out of the raft to jump off of rocks.

As we got further down the river, some of the rapids got larger, but none of them were especially violent. It was just enough to be fun without being scary. I sort of remember going on a raft trip with a YMCA summer camp when I was in elementary school or maybe junior high, and the rapids we went through then were much bigger. I think Idaho probably has better rafting than Shikoku. But it was a fun way to spend an afternoon, and the paddling was a good deal of exercise. I spent the last length of river floating along outside the raft with three of the other girls. The smarter two stayed in the raft, where they were warm and dry. Relatively speaking, that is.

All in all, it was a good adventure. I think all of us are interested in doing it again sometime. Maybe next time we'll try the all day tour, which they told us has class 4 rapids. I think the section of river we did was probably a 3, but I'm not sure. I'm probably not all that good at paddling, what with my weak arms, but I enjoy rafting. I think Happy Raft is an especially good company in that several of the staff speak English, and everyone is very friendly and knowledgeable. Even with us doing a rather pitiful job of paddling, I felt like we were quite safe because our guide could basically take care of things on his own. Anyhow, it was a good day, and we got to see a very beautiful section of river.

Until next time!