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Sanriku Fukkō NP, Aomori / Iwate / Miyagi
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
At Jōdogahama, rising tide opens a small inlet into Senjōjiki; when seas are calm, the tide can also unlock a kayak-only passage around Cape Tashiro. No road reaches this rocky peninsula, making the water its only approach.
From Ura-no-hama, an intermediate-level kayak trip paddles about 6 km round-trip to uninhabited Oranda Island, passing oyster and scallop rafts. They are working sea-farms: shellfish aquaculture is part of everyday Yamada Bay life.
From a kayak, Jōdogahama’s jagged towers and pale beach tell one story: waves eroded silica-rich rhyolite formed 40–50 million years ago, then rounded and gathered fragments inside the cove.
Shizugawa Bay’s kayak route crosses a Ramsar wetland with 4 underwater meadow types—kelp, arame, sargassum and eelgrass. A local pedal-kayak program turns this living seascape into a lesson on biodiversity, climate change and recovery.
After the 2011 tsunami damaged Yamada’s main visitor sites, the town began kayak events and free group loans in fiscal 2012. A charity later donated 10 kayaks and 20 paddles, helping sea paddling take root as local tourism.
A Jōdogahama guide uses kayaking to spot sea slugs, hermit crabs and starfish, then contrasts abundant urchins with sparse seaweed to discuss “isoyake” (seaweed-bed decline) and warming seas.
A Jōdogahama kayak guide points out features called Sword Mountain, Koyasu Jizō, Sai-no-Kawara and Blood Pond, then a skull-like boulder shaped by tafoni weathering. The names carry Buddhist stories; the skull is geology.
One Miyako guide’s Jōdogahama trips grew from 20–30-minute event paddles into 90-minute “geokayaks” after 2011. He qualified as a Sanriku Geopark guide so visitors could hear the coast’s geology while floating beside it.
