Sandankyo gorge echoes with birdsong
Driving toward my destination in the mountains, I turned down the car stereo to listen to the sounds of birds singing all around. I was headed to Sandankyo gorge, a scenic spot in Akiota, Japan. The gorge is part of Nishi-Chugoku Sanchi Quasi-National Park.
The beautiful 16-kilometre ravine was awarded three stars by the major French travel book series Blue Guide in February. Access to part of the gorge had been blocked when snow caused a tree to fall across a road in December last year, but I heard that it was reopened in June. I walked through the gorge while taking in scenes of seemingly untouched nature.
I asked Tsutomu Koge, 67, manager of a hotel at the entrance of the gorge, to be my guide.
“I discover something new every time I look around,” he said. “Just linger wherever you want here without caring about having a goal in mind or wondering what time it is.”
An elderly French couple who read the Blue Guide said they took a leisurely three-kilometre walk to Kurobuchi, a ferry boat point, lingering there for three hours until the evening, and fully enjoyed the experience. I walked the same trail.
I could appreciate the varied greenery, including alpine plants, on the mountain road. Small white sekkoku orchids and kogakuutsugi hydrangeas grew gregariously on the mountain trail and cliffs. Tsuga sieboldii pines and Japanese horse chestnut trees, which can store a large amount of water and contribute to flood control, had started bearing green leaves. Shimaidaki Falls tumbles over the rocks near the mountain road in three or four separate torrents, depending on the level of the water.
The waterfalls “sometimes look like they’re smiling and sometimes like they’re angry, just like a woman’s expressions,” Koge said.
A valley of granite and rhyolite volcanic rock has been eroded by rapid streams whose elevation difference measures a maximum of 400 metres. It is marked by huge and strangely shaped rocks.
At Kurobuchi, where a 100-metre cliff stands out and sunlight glimmers dimly on the surface of 11-metre-deep water, I rode a ferry to Kurobuchi-so, a riverside tea house on the opposite bank, with boatman Katsunori Imai as my guide. On the boat, I could enjoy a view that reminded me of a Chinesestyle landscape painting. The previous rapid streams were completely replaced by mirror-smooth water. When I thought I was hearing wild birds chirping and looked around for them, Imai said: “Those are actually kajika singing frogs.”
I rested at a tea house, eating a yamame trout broiled with salt and somen noodles, and listened to the natural orchestra of the hidden scenic place.
On the way back, encouraged by the singing of an oruri blue-andwhite flycatcher, I sat on a huge rock near Horaiiwa rock, which resembles the legendary mountain of Penglai in China.
Sandankyo gorge is a beautiful spot that was a hidden gem of the prefecture until photographer Nampo Kuma (1876-1943) and Rosui Saito (1884-1964), a schoolteacher, introduced the spot to the public in the Taisho era (1912 -1926). Koge’s grandfather accompanied and guided the photographer. His predecessors protected the local fauna and flora from development projects and fought erosion and flooding to maintain the mountain roads.