The 7th tale: A raftman's inn and a big spider
The map attached shows the landscape around the Sakuma FC described in the fisrt tale of this series. Major facilities;

in the middle; FC (Frequency Convertion Station)
on the right; Power Station
and at the upper left: Dam

(the map was borrowed from the website of the National Geographical Institute).


As shown in the map, the Tenryu river makes a steep U turn around the mountain. The location at the bottom of the letter U has a relatively mild stream. In the olden days, it was an inn town, called Sakuma Nakabe, for those engaged in steering log rafts in the rapid stream.

The raftmen of the Tenryu River transported the logs in the upper stream area of Ina valley down to Hamamatu, Enshuu. The activities were under a strict contorol of Tokugawa Shognate.

Beacause of the life-threatening work to go down "Abare Tenryu"(Violent Tenryu), the raftmen earned good money and spended accordingly. Inns or the likes in which they can take full rest were required.

At the works for the FC, I frequently used an inn called K. It was a decent inn for the mountain region, and its customers used to be such raftmen.

The inn looked always empty. I was routinely offered a room at the end of a roofed passage overlooking a traditional garden with a pond.

On one occasion, upon sliding the door open and stepping my foot into the room, I was startled to notice I trod on something wiggling under the slipper, and I jumped aside. Just before that, I had heard of a sound something light fell down.

Switching the light on revealed a big spider trying to scurry. A spider of a palm size! Although the area is in the midst of mountains, I was really astonished to see that big spider.

At later times, I had the exactly same experience as before, twice. At the second, I again stepped on the spider and I jumped aside. For the third one, however, I did not tread on it. It looks the spider always resided at the upper corner of the entrance.

P.S.：

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As I felt that no one believes the existence of spider of this size at least locally, I have just tried to check online. Wow, in many websites, there are a lot of information about this spider. Looks this is not so uncommon species now.

Acc. to them;
This is a species native to India, called here "Asi-daka-gumo" (leg high spider), first sight in Japan in Meiji eara at Nagasaki, nonpoisonous, at times to feed a small rat! Even a nickname is given: "Gunsou"! (Seargent!).

Considering this new information, the spider(s) of that entrace did not fall down accidentally. Rather, it seems correct to assume that they resided there regularly, and on detecting an oncoming prey, it jumped down.

For many years, I sometimes reminded of the encounters and wondered what was the reason the spider fell down as many as three times at those timings just in front of my passage. Now, I finally understood the very reason!!

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