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Deadly jagged rocks, dangerously fast water currents and the blatant absence of any kind of local authority-built safety precautions pretty much highlighted the fun-filled family day out at Ryumon no taki in Oita prefecture, last weekend.

Ryumon no taki is a large waterfall famous for its flat, slanted rocks at its base (the dangerous, jagged ones being at the side), which allows people to slide down, aided by the fast current, into the pool below. I went with a group of peers although the area was populated mainly by families having barbecues and watching their children happily walk along the rocks with big smiles, occasionally swept over by the speed of the water causing them to audibly smash their heads on the ground, which was the source of much amusement for the parents - safe by their barbecue pits, drinking beer.

Ryumon means ‘Dragon Gate’. Now, call me a slave to common sense, but the name of this place isn’t really synonymous with somewhere that children are supposed to play in. It’s not called “Happy Rabbit Grove” or “Pixie Dust Candy Floss Joyplace” - it has the word DRAGON in it.

Apologies for sounding like an ethnocentric twat, but if this was the UK, the entire place would either be fenced off forever, or would have SOME kind of safety measures put in place, since its obvious that families want to enjoy themselves there. For example, to get up to the middle or top where you can slide down the flat rocks, you must first travel up the side where there is no water coming down (well, no fast-moving water), along some wet, jagged rocks that go almost vertical in elevation. You would think that there would be at least a rail to hold on to. But no. Kids and adults alike would gingerly manoeuvre their way up these rocks on all-fours in full knowledge of the fact that if they lost their footing, they would either slip all the way to the bottom on their faces, or the resultant panicky flail of limbs would push other people off into the torrent of water beside them, resulting in their hapless bodies being whipped into the flow of water and sent down the slope.

Outwardly refusing to slide all the way from the top as a) I noticed a distinct lack of other people doing it, which I took as a warning by proxy, b) it just looked ridiculously dangerous, but mainly because c) I am a huge pussy, I chose to merely slide from the middle. Sitting down on the flat rocks with water gushing into your back, and looking down at the pool of water 30 metres below is about as close to thinking I could possibly die as I have ever come. Really, all it would take is a bit of bad luck and you would end up flipping awkwardly after one of the mini-slopes on the way down, soaring through the air and falling on your head or landing arse-first in someone’s barbecue pit.

Overall I had fun, but the constant fear that someone was going to be horrifically injured right before your eyes and the crippling hangover I was experiencing from some particularly evil tequila the night before, made it all the less enjoyable.

Ah yes, the hangover.

God bless his soul for he was the one friendly enough to take me to Oita in the first place, but I do believe I spent the weekend with the Japanese equivalent of a frat-boy. Apart from literally pouring drink down my throat (”this is a Japanese drinking game. Oh you lost! Too baaad! Drink this”) he would do such things as scream “WAHA!” to pedestrians whilst driving by in his car with the windows rolled down, liberally dish out Japanese-style noogies and of course, he slid down from the top of the waterfall every single time. He also had a kind of catchphrase that through osmosis I find myself saying now and again:

“Nuuu!”

Which has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2003 at 5:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.