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Bandai Asahi NP, Iwate
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Jodogahama’s Blue Cave is also called Hachinohe-ana (“Hachinohe Hole”): local lore says a dog entered here by boat and later appeared in Hachinohe. The kayak school offers cave entry on its 7 a.m. early tour.
Some tucked-away inlets on this coast are accessible only by kayak. The official geotour also paddles to Senjojiki, a broad natural rock shelf, revealing a shoreline perspective walkers can’t get from the path.
Jodogahama’s pebbles once served as a drying ground for kelp. When poet Kenji Miyazawa visited in July 1917, he wrote a tanka picturing the kelp spread across the shore, shining in the light.
The guided kayak route passes fractured white rhyolite features with names worthy of a fantasy map: Sword Mountain, Koyasu Jizo and Blood Pond. These are real landmarks viewed from the water, not trail-side signs.
Jodogahama’s white stones are ancient rhyolite, but the cove is younger: after the last ice age, rising seas eroded the rock masses into today’s shoreline over thousands of years, up to about 7,000 years ago.
Look up from the kayak: red pines and other plants cling to the upper faces of Jodogahama’s huge rocks, where waves reach less often. Their green crowns make a striking contrast with the pale stone and blue sea.
Jodogahama means “Pure Land Beach.” Local accounts say that in 1681–1683, priest Reikyo Ryuko saw the shore and exclaimed that it looked just like paradise—giving the landscape a name that has lasted for centuries.
