Memory from Japan #15
There were 5 of us stuffed into a medium sized SUV with rock-climbing gear overflowing in the back. I sat in the middle in the back seat and mostly sat listening to the conversation. This was my first time being the lone foreigner in a group of Japanese guys. The language rolled and spit off their tongue in a slur of half-words and slang but they were the same group of guys you could find anywhere. Conversation swung between sports, to making fun of each other, to girls, and back again with the subtle grace that comes from raw, natural language. I didn’t understand everything but it was all familiar enough.
We hiked down into a valley with a boulder strewn river that was fed by waterfalls from the cliffs above. We waded through freezing cold water to find a good boulder to climb and our screams and laughs from the icy water made the language irrelevant. The climbing area was on the edge of an ice-blue whirlpool, spinning from a crashing waterfall. A couple of us focused on one boulder and set-up pads over the dangerous uneven ground. We climbed and tried to figure out how to ascend the overhanging boulder. Sport superseded language and we talked by pointing, climbing, howling and cheering.
