201503 Tokyo-Izu Peninsula Road Trip Day 6 @Eat & Travel, Ling!

Kawazu Nanadaru Loop Bridge

For the second half of our day, we planned to visit Joren Falls, located right in the middle of Izu Peninsula, and Kawazu Seven Waterfalls. SY was quite cautious with her driving as she hadn’t drove for a very long time, so it took us double the time to get to Joren Falls. On the way there, we drove on the Kawazu Nanadaru Loop Bridge, an interesting spiral bridge. The bridge was built to bring traffic to higher grounds as the mountain was too steep for a conventional road. I have not seen another similar bridge in my Japan travels. Truly amazing sight.

Joren Falls

Joren Falls is considered one of the best 100 waterfalls in Japan. It was not a very big waterfall but made a pretty picture with the basalt rocks by its side. We admired the waterfall and soak in the negative ions.

There were many people fishing trout downstream from Joren Falls. Visitors could rent a rod from the fish store and catch their own trouts. We took the easy way out and bought 2 salted grill trout for a snack; they were very tasty and we ate up the whole trout.

Joren Falls Wasabi

The area around Joren Falls was also famous for Wasabi. We had thought of buying the Wasabi but decided not to as we weren’t able to keep Wasabi in a cool environment during the trip. Wasabi plant is quite fragile and would spoil easily if not handled correctly. I bought a pretty Ito Kokeshi (the yellow Japanese Wooden Doll in the photo below) for my Mum. It is sitting prettily on the mantle at home with other Japanese Dolls that I’d bought over the years for her.

Kawazu Seven Waterfalls

I decided to take over the driving to make up for the lost time as we backtracked towards Kawazu Seven Waterfalls. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to hike to all 7 falls and could only see a few waterfalls that were nearer to the parking lot. I didn’t want to drive in a dark on mountain roads and wanted to get to our Shimoda lodging when it was still daylight. During our trip, the sun was setting around 6pm each day.

The waters at Kawazu Seven Falls were so clear. We would probably have jumped in to cool down if it was summer. We picked up a grilled miso dango snack from a little souvenir shop near the falls. After spending a short time at Kawazu Seven Falls, we decided to head towards our lodging for the night.