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Spelunking in Sumita
Anthony Hand
This was written on Sunday, November 13, 1994, and has been included almost verbatim. This was also printed in our prefecture's monthly AJET magazine, the Rock Hand Roll. This was such a cool experience and I learned a lot about Japanese deaf culture.
After tiring myself out at the Internationalization event in Mizusawa yesterday, all I wanted was to go to bed and sleep in until about 11:00 this morning, but it was not to be -- I had an event scheduled for today with my Japanese sign language (JSL) group in Ichinoseki. So I crashed in Ichinoseki at Paul's place last night and met everyone at 8:30 this morning. Ugh! Too early! Then we set off for Sumita Town's famous Ryukan-do Cave about two hours away.
It was an interesting cave. It was really tiring, though, too. The thing that makes this cave special is the water fall, Japan's tallest cave waterfall. The only problem is that it's located about 900 meters into the side of the mountain! And it's not an easy hike, either. I think we were in there for about an hour or so, hiking there, stopping to watch the waterfall for a few minutes, then hiking back. It's a good thing we were given helmets, because I banged my head several times, and I'd have scrambled my brain more than it already is by the time I'd finished. The walk was also difficult because the walk was slippery over the bare stone most of the way, with slimy walls on either side. I had to squat down and walk like a duck through some very narrow passages, too. One poor lady got so nauseous from all the tight spaces, going up and down, and squatting so much that she got sick in the cave. I think there were several others among the 36 of us who were on the verge, too.
I especially enjoyed seeing the bats hanging on the walls of the cave. There weren't so many of them, we only saw about a half dozen. You know, they really do hang upside down with their wings folded over their faces. I found that interesting. But one gal was terrified of them, so it's a good thing she didn't know about them until we were halfway through walking back. I'd hate to think that she was still down there. (Although I am kind of chuckling guiltily at the thought of it.)
The coolest thing about today was communicating with my deaf Japanese friends through JSL. This was my first road trip with them since I'd started class this spring. I'm still not even close to fluent, but I can understand and "speak" a lot of basic JSL. But it's difficult to translate from JSL to Japanese to English simultaneously in my head!
I also discovered an extremely practical use for JSL, even for hearing people. Have you ever taken a road trip with a bunch of friends in separate cars and no C.B.? Using sign language is an excellent was to communicate with your friends! I was in one of the later cars with my eyes glued to the windows marveling at the beautiful mountain scenery when I happened to take a glance at the driver. He was staring at the rear-view mirror and passing along a message from the lead car to the one behind us! It startled me at first. Then I noticed that there was a lot of this inter-auto sign language chatting going on -- directions, jokes, gossip, whatever. Pretty cool!
Driving back through the mountains was nerve-wracking for me, though. If you'd have been there, you would've felt the same. You see, we had to take the really twisty, really windy roads across the mountains. The going up and down, twisting around and around wasn't the worst part, though it was plenty bad enough. The worst part was that there were nine cars in our group, each going rather quickly on this road that, I swear, was bare a lane across. I was a nervous wreck!
My usual strategy for dealing with nerve-wracking roads is to fall asleep as it's easy for me to do so in cars. I did that and managed to save my sanity when I was in New Zealand last year. As we were coming back from the Pacific Ocean across the mountain range dividing the Coramandel Peninsula, my host father was speeding up and down the roads, slamming on his brakes at the last second just as we were going around curves -- you get the picture. My knuckles were white as I grabbed onto the door handles for dear life while trying to appear calm. It didn't work. Thank God I couldn't see the road when it got dark and I finally fell asleep!
Well, it was a similar story today, but happily we weren't speeding so much. With nine cars for 36 people, we had to stop several times as people kept getting car sick! I'm glad I wasn't the only one who wasn't enjoying the ride so much. I didn't get sick -- only nervous problems. There were guard rails for most of it, but there were patches where the guard rail was mysteriously missing... I couldn't help but wonder why. And it didn't help to think about how terribly high up we were in the mountains.
Now you may be asking yourself why I didn't just go to sleep. The answer to that is it's because the view was so lovely! All we could see were tall mountains around us, hardly any signs of humans. And even though it's about a week past peak viewing time, the fall colors were still spectacular! Russets, golds, crimsons, yellows -- simply fantastic! There was no way I was going to go to sleep when it was still light outside, despite my fear that we'd plunge hundreds of meters down the side of the mountain any minute. At least I'd die with an eyeful of autumn's glory! Happily, though, I survived intact, mentally and physically all the way back to Ichinoseki.