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Nikko NP, Tochigi
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“Ryūka” means “becoming a dragon,” and the 3-tier zigzag looks like a dragon climbing skyward. The name also echoes the legend of a carp that surmounts the Dragon Gate and transforms into a dragon.
The cascade travels 130 m along the gorge, but its vertical drop is 60 m. Those figures measure different things: its 3 tiers let the water wind a long route while descending far less straight down.
Green tuff and andesite make up the rock around Ryūka. As andesite magma cooled, its outside chilled faster than its interior and cracked, helping create the striking fractured texture of the surrounding rock.
On the way to Ryūka, the Shiobara Visitor Center points out a wall called Timber Rock (材木岩): it resembles upright logs bundled together, but is igneous porphyrite split into column-shaped joints.
A local flora survey recorded daimonsō among the exposed-rock plants on the route to Ryūka. This small saxifrage gets its name from white flowers shaped like 大, the Japanese character for “great.”
A 1980 Tochigi prefectural newsletter called Shiobara a town of waterfalls, listing Ryūka alongside Fūkyō and Hōsetsu (“snow-casting”). The neighboring cascades, too, have names worth remembering.
