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Ise-Shima NP, Mie
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
At the center, a film fills 3 walls and the floor. Step closer to a scene—such as Ama divers gathering turban snails—and it responds with an explanation in your chosen language.
In 2018, an idea from Yokoyama Visitor Center reached a Tokyo festival: visitors made raden pictures by arranging crushed akoya-oyster shell on dark tiles—the shell that grows pearls.
Ago Bay’s islands have a surprising origin: after the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, the sea flooded river valleys, leaving more than 50 hilltops as islands. The center interprets this landscape.
In sheltered Ago Bay, people cultivate aosa seaweed and pearls; just outside its mouth, Ama divers gather shellfish and seaweed from rocky seabeds. Local rules help prevent overharvesting.
Yokoyama’s forest is a working satoyama: residents used dense, hard ubamegashi oak to make binchōtan charcoal, and arakashi oak for firewood. The center’s theater shows charcoal makers at work.
The center is a base for about 40 trained park volunteers, whose activities total more than 100 days a year. At nearby Sozo-no-Mori, they count red-frog egg masses to estimate breeding females.
Orange montbretia beneath the nearby Sky Café Terrace may look ornamental, but it is invasive. Park staff, center staff and volunteers dig it out carefully to keep it from spreading.
Squirrels are hard to spot in Yokoyama’s woods, but their gnawed pinecones are easier to find. Stripped down to shrimp-shaped cores, these leftovers are nicknamed “mori no ebifurai”—forest shrimp fry.
A local legend says a fish seller spotted 3 stones floating at sea; that night, his Ama wife dreamed they asked to be brought ashore. A second dream directed the stones uphill to Yokoyama, where they guard boats.
The wetlands around Yokoyama are summer territory for hachō-tonbo, Japan’s smallest dragonfly at under 20 mm long. Mature males turn vivid red, while females remain brownish.
