Flowers and Nausea

There's a lot of seemingly unnecessary hand-holding that happens at my school. Endless reminders of how to go to the bathroom, complete with little pictures of smiling cartoon characters happily peeing into toilets. So when the form for the new student field trip included a box for car sickness, I checked "no" without much thought, even though I am prone to car sickness. And again, during a big meeting, even though I was able to pick something about car sickness out of the teacher's extremely fast Japanese, I ignored it. Unless it's some really bad situation, I'm usually OK.

Let me tell you about a really bad situation.

It was about an hour into the ride on the big, soft bus that we finally stopped. Curving, dipping roads that went up into the mountains behind Oita revealed lush beauty, terraced rice fields and misty, cloud-covered peaks. It also threatened to reveal what I had eaten for breakfast. And then we got back on the bus, our stop only a brief bathroom break.

By the time we reached Kuju Hanakoen, a flower park another hour deep into the Oita Prefecture hinterlands, I was absolutely green. Or blue, as they say here. I never got a good look at myself but apparently my lips were white. I ran for the bathroom and then, secure that I would not vomit, attempted to collapse on a bench. My respite was short-lived, and I soon found myself smiling gamely for a group photo.

For the next two hours, while everyone else enjoyed the admittedly beautiful scenery and fields of flowers, I sat on a bench and started at my shoes. At one point a family approached me to take their picture but stopped short when they saw my face. Two girls from our group also wanted to take my picture, perhaps because of that same face.

I did manage to look up long enough to see this:

After two hours I was feeling good enough to stand, and was promptly ushered back onto the bus. Word about my condition had gotten around, or perhaps everyone saw me make that frantic bee-line for the bathroom, and so a box of something akin to Dramamine was put into my hand. I took two after lunch and it did the trick, mostly. I didn't get nauseas en route to our next stop, but the dizziness remained. Even when off the bus, I could still feel the twists and turns of the road.

So I was in no shape to partake of the massive, swaying suspension bridge that everyone else clambered across. The "Dream" suspension bridge spans a massive gorge, and overlooks numerous waterfalls and other sites of spectacular, natural beauty. Or so I imagine; I sat on a bench by myself, my head spinning, while everyone else got to see whatever it was we had driven so far to see.

After a half-hour of feeling sorry for my dizzy self I wandered around a bit on terra firma and found a short path down below the bridge, where I was treated with this stunning sight:

I was the only one in the group to have seen this, which made me feel just a little bit better. Until I got back on the bus for the two-hour journey home, that is.