Finding Death at the Waterfall

A friend from Oita once asked, “So how are you finding life up in Gifu? Do you miss the people and places in Oita?”

“I miss the places,” I answered. “Not so much the people.”

“You son of a bitch!” he replied. Then he added, “Boy, I really set him up for that one. I set him up and he took it.”

Actually I was only half joking. I really do miss the places in Oita almost as much as the people. The area I live in now is just essentially urban sprawl from Nagoya. It’s a bit more convenient than Ajimu, but very ugly. I miss all the nature in Oita. I miss the greenery. I miss the valleys. I miss the little enclaves of houses hidden away in the middle of the mountain.

I especially miss the waterfalls. The topography of Japan is a little different than that of Michigan. There are lots of mountains, lots of rivers, and, by consequence, lots of waterfalls. In most areas the Japanese construction companies are hard at work destroying everything, but in areas like Oita, where the nature is left relatively untouched, there are a couple waterfalls in just about every town. In my former town of Ajimu there were 5 very beautiful waterfalls, but everyone’s favorite waterfall is in Yabakei, because we can slide down it.

The place is very picturesque. I suppose, as the very word “picturesque” implies, it is hard for words to do this place justice. The river comes down through the mountains. It widens up at one point where some of it has been damned off to create a children’s pool. Then a little ways down, it narrows again as it squeezes through some rocks. Then there’s an abrupt drop off where it falls into a small lagoon at the bottom. The river expands briefly into a swimming area, and then carries on down the mountain. As a friend of mine once put it, “This place is straight out of the movies. It is the kind of place Disney would spend millions of dollars trying to re-create, and here it is hidden away in the middle of nowhere.”

The only thing that worries me slightly is another friend once pointed out there are little rice fields all along the river. Who knows what kind of agricultural chemicals get washed down stream? But I try not to think about that too much.

Anyway, it makes for a perfect natural waterslide. The rock has been carved out by the water to be as smooth as any amusement park waterslide. Of course we’re all skeptics the first time. I remember my first time I kept asking if the rock was really so smooth. “Really? You’re not jiving me here? There’s no snags or jagged rocks along this slide?”

“No, actually, there’s sharp rocks at the bottom, and you’re going to die. Now will you go already man?”

How time flies. Now I’ve gone from one of the newbies to the grizzled old man on the block, giving advice to the new people. The other day someone was saying to me, “Is it very scary sliding down the waterfall? I’ve jumped off the cliff, but I haven’t worked up the courage to slide down the waterfall yet.”

“What? No, it’s much easier to slide down the waterfall than to jump off the cliff. If you jump off the cliff, you’ve got to look over the edge and work up the courage. But if you slide down the waterfall, you start higher up on the river where you can’t even see the drop off. And once you can see the drop off, the water is already carrying you along, so it’s too late to try and stop. You just hold your breath and go over the edge. Once you hit the lagoon at the bottom, the force of the waterfall will push you underwater briefly. You’re a strong swimmer, right?”

“Um….Not really.”

“Well it’s still okay. The water only pushes you under briefly, and then it lets you back up again. It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

He didn’t end up sliding down that day.

While we were there, we observed all sorts of flowers placed around the waterfall. “Someone kid died here on Sunday,” someone told me. “That’s why all these flowers are here.”

“What? How?”

“We don’t know. All we heard is that he died here somehow.”

“How could he have died here? This is the safest place in the world. The waterfall is really safe to go off of. The water is deep enough so that even if you jump off of the cliffs it is all right. How could he have died?” I thought for a moment. “I guess sometimes people do stupid things around here. Like sometimes people will jump out of that tree over there.”

“Wow, that is stupid,” someone said.

“Yeah, who could possibly be so stupid as to do something like that,” someone else said. There was a lot of laughter.

“You guys were jumping out of that tree before I got here, weren’t you?” There were some mutterings. “It is kind of dangerous though, isn’t it? If you’re not careful you could hit those branches on the way down. Or, you could hit that rock over there.” I stopped to consider. “I guess if you’re careful though, the tree isn’t really that dangerous.”

“But if you’re not careful, it’s not just the tree that will get you,” someone else said. “You could hit your head on the waterfall going down. Or what about the cliffs? If you jump from over there it’s okay, but anywhere else is really sketchy. When I was here last time I saw a bunch of guys following around at the top, and someone slipped through and fell on that cliff over there. He was okay, but he took a few bumps.”

“Yeah, I guess when you put it like that, there’s probably lots of ways to die at this waterfall.”

“I feel kind of guilty swimming here,” I confessed.

“Yeah, we do too, but what can we do. We didn’t find out about it until we got here.”

I suppose we all have those moments where we are forced to contemplate the commonness of death. Someone’s entire existence, all his thoughts and dreams and hopes and loves, were just wiped out, and it didn’t even stop us from having a good time.

I was back at the waterfall a couple days later with a slightly different crowd. Again, the same debate aroused. “I don’t feel right swimming here if a kid died on Sunday,” someone said.

“But we’re already here anyway.”

“And,” I said, “If it didn’t stop us from swimming here on Tuesday, there’s no reason why it should stop us from swimming here on Thursday.”

“And since we all seem to be talking ourselves into it anyway…” someone else said.

We found out later it was a 16 year old boy; a first year high school student. Apparently he hit his head on the way down the waterfall, and then got sucked under by the current. He was from Nakatsu city, just visiting for the day.