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Ashizuri-Uwakai NP, Kochi
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In 2011, children at a local junior high cared for loggerhead eggs laid at Oki Beach. After 131 hatchlings emerged, pupils and neighbors helped release them at nearby Shimonokae Beach—a community effort sparked by nesting here.
Older guidebooks credited Oki’s white sand to granite from Cape Ashizuri, but Geopark researchers have questioned that familiar explanation. They suspect much of the sand is crushed foraminifera shells and other shell fragments; analysis was underway.
Oki’s coastal forest was once a planted black-pine windbreak. After pine wilt killed many trees, broadleaf species spread naturally—many carried by birds—and the woodland shifted toward laurel forest over roughly 40 years. Researchers study this unusual transformation.
Behind the beach, the coastal forest stretches about 200 meters inland and covers roughly 22 hectares. A research report recorded trees with trunks about 90 centimeters across—impressive giants in a place where salt-laden winds usually stunt coastal trees.
Oki’s coastal forest shelters kakatsugayu (Cudrania cochinchinensis), a rare warm-climate plant. A local ecological report recorded nearly 20 scattered plants, and the site’s kakatsugayu was designated a Tosashimizu City Natural Monument in 1959.
Those little beads of sand around small holes can be clues to life beneath your feet: kometsuki crabs sift edible material from the sand, then push the cleaned grains out in tiny balls. Oki’s Geopark guide points out this miniature beach activity.
Oki’s sweeping shore began taking shape around 10,000 years ago, when rising seas flooded a lowland and formed a bay. A sandbar built across the bay’s entrance became the starting point for the beach we see today.
Oki Beach has a seasonal sky show: the local tourism association notes that a daruma sunrise may appear here from November through February. The rising sun can seem to swell into the rounded shape of a daruma doll above the horizon.
