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Saikai NPKujukushima, Nagasaki
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The cliff’s name comes from its resemblance to salt bales: waves have sliced the basalt columns across, exposing offset polygonal faces like a stack of the old salt-carrying bundles.
Each near-vertical basalt pillar is 60–120 cm thick. As the lava cooled and shrank, it cracked into columns; five- or six-sided ends and horizontal fractures create a striking honeycomb-and-slab pattern.
The cliffs have a deep-time prequel: about 15 million years ago, Ikitsuki was a shallow seabed collecting gravel, sand, mud and volcanic ash. Later, between 10 and 6 million years ago, basalt lava spread over those sediments.
This remarkable stretch of basalt columns runs about 500 m and rises more than 20 m. Nagasaki Prefecture designated it a Natural Monument on September 29, 1989.
