Takachiho Gorge

Okay, this is officially sad. I am over a year behind now as these pictures were taken on December 26, 2007. Sorry, just way too busy. We are back from Thailand. Flew in from Osaka the day before yesterday and spent yesterday in a very crowded Osaka shopping on the biggest shopping day of the year in Japan. Thailand was awesome except for some sickness I experienced. More on that later. Now I have to get you caught up!
So Takachiho was the place I last visited in my blog where I showed you the cave. This is the gorge nearby...maybe 20 minutes away or so. The road down to it was a little scary. It looked like a one-way road, but we soon found out it was a two way when cars started coming. Scary. The road signs weren't as plentiful here and we got a little lost and slowed down (not that we weren't already going at turtle speed). A nice guy told us in Japanese which way the gorge was and we didn't even ask. I guess he just figured what else would be be doing out here in the middle of nowhere. We thanked him and drove over the little scary bridge and pulled into this parking area, which we still aren't sure if it was for the gorge of the souvenir shop. No one bothered our car, so who really cares.

The part of the bridge you see above was the scary one we drove on. It was SO narrow! the gorge was so much bigger and deeper and more beautiful and scary than it looks in these photos. The rock formations were fantastic. It was cool because it was winter, yet a sunny day. You can boat down the gorge if you'd like. I didn't want to get on a boat in the cold, but further up we saw that some people were doing it anyway. The water was a very beautiful turquoise color.


There was lots of pretty green moss. I was really scared standing near the edge taking some of these photos. We were kinda in a hurry because I still wanted to see the burial mounds later that day that were far off.



Markian bravely standing near the edge.

See how pretty the water is. The color was very nice.




I would like to go again and try boating next time. Too bad we were in a hurry. My main reason to come to Takachiho was to see the shrine in the earlier post. I was surprised the gorge was nice as it was.