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Bandai Asahi NP, Iwate
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The outlet is just 2.5 m long and 65 cm wide, yet rough waves and a strong northeasterly can drive seawater through its sea cave into a plume about 30 m high.
Locals call it horafuki-ana (“blowhard hole”) and kimagure-ana (“fickle hole”): unless wave direction, wind and wave height align, the blowhole may not blow. Winter makes the trio likelier.
The jagged rock around the vent is conglomerate of the Miyako Group, deposited about 110 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous. Waves later carved a sea cave into those ancient layers.
A municipal cross-section estimates the vent descends about 16 m to the seabed and the sea cave extends roughly 20 m. Its source: research by a local teacher and Miyako High School students in 1965.
Japan designated Sakiyama’s blowhole a Natural Monument on September 7, 1939; the original record reports 6–15 m spouts, topping 30 m in high waves. This is Sanriku Fukko NP, not Bandai-Asahi.
