Japan Journal: Forest Adventure

It seems like this week I'm single handedly trying to knock out the entire bucket list, because today we crossed off another one. Cannon's only addition to the "bucket list" was to go to Forest Adventure - a zip lining course through the wilds of Okinawa, and Friday he got to go! He has been wanting to go for a while, but I was waiting for him to get a little bigger and a little stronger. This is not really an easy thing to do - there's a lot of climbing up ropes and ladders and then a bit on the end where you have to do a vertical climb up a cargo net after free-falling and zipping. Let me tell you, it's challenging!

The tarzan net

So Friday afternoon, after school, I took Cannon and his friend Marc for a go around. Stevie stayed home with the little ones and let me have the fun.

This week is Golden Week for the Japanese - a time with three back to back holidays which translate into almost the whole country being off. Consequently, things have been really busy around Okinawa and, unfortunately, busy around Forest Adventure. So after waiting for a half hour to get our chance on the "training stop" we were suited up with our oh-so-attractive harnesses.

The training was a quick, slightly unintelligible safety brief by a Japanese guy whose advice about how to hook yourself onto the zip line include "this way - good, this way - bye, bye!" We walked across a tight rope, zipped down a short line and were deemed fit to go on the course.

Surprisingly, they make the adult go first with the minors to follow. I wasn't too comfortable with that since I would have preferred to be there to double check the boys rigging on the zip line, but instead I stood on the other side of the valley hoping Cannon wouldn't go dropping through the trees! He did great and jumped right off the platform and above the treetops he flew!