October 24-25, 2009: The Bridge to Heaven

My Fall Break started by going to one of Japan’s ‘three great views,’ Amanohashidate, translated as the Bridge to Heaven. My host father drove for about 2.5 hours north of Kyoto city, felt like 4 or 5 because we took so many breaks in between to get lunch/etc. We stayed at a really nice hotel by the beach (and I was the guest of honor!) and I have wanted to swim for the longest, so we all brought our bathing suits and got in the pool for about 30 minutes. It was a shallow pool, but felt nice to get some exercise. Then we had dinner together, and drank some alcohol/beer. In the morning, they woke me up early to see the sun rise out of the ocean. It was beautiful. I only wished it was warmer so I could have swum in the ocean!

The ‘bridge’ of Amanohashidate is actually a long, narrow strip of sand covered with thousands of pines trees (8000 pine trees with hundred of different species) and surrounded on both sides with water. It is 3.5 km in length and at both ends is a ropeway with a beautiful view from above (one side much more heavily populated with tourists than the other). There was a cable car, but also a chairlift. I have never been on a chairlift and was a little anxious at first, but going down is definitely scarier than coming up. Although I was quite fearless, not holding on, squirming in my seat and waving like a 5 year old to my host mother and father, who were a seat in front and a seat behind me, my host father told me I should hold on tight. When we got to the top, the view was beautiful. I never could have imagined that nature could create something like it. I kept asking questions to my host family in Japanese like, “did that happen naturally?” or “did someone plant all those trees there or did it just happen?” and was surprised to hear that it’s a natural phenomenon. And here my appreciation for natural has developed even more so.

Ever since I’ve come to Japan, I have slowly developed an appreciation for nature that I’ve never had. I was such a litterbug in America, not caring about throwing garbage on the streets because I knew it was someone’s job to do it anyway, and no one really seemed to care (minus some of my OCD tree-hugging friends). In Japan, I never throw garbage on the streets, recycle, and because there rarely is a garbage can on the streets, I bring my garbage home with me. Who knew I would grow up into such a responsible adult! At home in Kyoto, I even separate my garbage. My host family doesn’t even dump the oil used to fry foods down the drain, and instead goes out of their way to spend money at the supermarket buying this white powder that makes oil into a solid substance, thereby creating it into a disposable substance that will not harm the environment. I have never heard of this before, do people even do this in America? Does this substance even exist in America?

Anyway, I kind of took a detour, but back onto my weekend. Anyway, seeing Amanohashidate from the top is breath-taking. But, there is this weird custom. Everyone bends over and views the bridge through their legs and it’s supposed to make Amanohashidate look like it’s ‘floating.’ Well, I had to try this, and I tried a couple of times and didn’t understand the whole floating idea. So I gave up and took a picture of my host mom performing this feat. We also all rented bicycles and roamed the bridge of Amanohashidate. It was a nice bicycle ride through the enormous pine trees. At the end of Amanohashidate is a huge temple and tons of little shops. We also went to a famous temple on top of a mountain nearby and the bus ride up was so rocky and curvy that I was literally smashed from one side of the bus to the other as we went up.

Earlier that day we took a boat tour to Ine, a village in between the mountains that makes their living by fishing. Each house is connected to the sea with a garage for their boats and it has been like this for hundreds of years (maybe centuries). I was surprised that people can live and flourish in such a seemingly desolate place.

My host family and I also fished together, and it was so easy to catch so many little fish. They were about 2-3 inches in length and we caught about 65. That night we fried the fish and ate them all. It was so fresh and tasty. I never ate fish that I have caught myself and felt quite proud of myself. I wanted to do it the next day, but we didn’t have time.