Scintillating Coast: Ine to Satsu

Panorama of the coast just beyond Ine

Yesterday we traveled on along the coast in idyllic wild craggy scenery, becoming completely stranded when the coast road we took and even the main highway proved to be closed forcing us to make a convoluted detour on back roads over high hill country, including one of Honshu's few pasture cattle farms, before returning to the coast. A driver we stopped to ask how to get through drove for about 10 kms to help us get on to the appropriate back road detour, something Japan is renowned for. At Kumihama (Tangokanno) we routed the lake to the North and took a back road back to some of the wildest and most precipitous coast we have seen so far, with sweeping views of the rocky cliffs, the ocean scintillating azure and foam white in the sunshine, finally stopping just short of Kazumi on a beach beside a small seaside town called Satsu just beyond Takeno.

A fishing village with a rock shrine and stone fish beside the road

The land poked out into this small alluvial spit with rice paddies being harvested and a tiny village with a small shrine overlooking the ocean.

The shrine celebrates horses

Steep embankments with precipitous falls

We had to turn inland when a tunnel on the coat road was inexplicably blocked and arrived at this little temple which comes with a model of a Japanese sailing boat and scenes of combat, apparently with Amaterasu the Goddess of the Sun.









From here a helpful Japanese local workman escorted us for abut 10 kms to a turn off to a small hill road which circumvented the blocked tunnel and took us high into the hills.


We cam out overlooking one of the few cattle farms on the high country of Honshu.

Looking from the high country back down to the coast beyond

A peerless white sand beach we passed.

Parking up for lunch at a small inlet

More of the ancient thatched dwellings we originally saw at Ogimachi

The sea became crystal clear, so you could see the underwater shoals glowing turquoise beneath.








We drove around the little lake at Tangokanno here you can see panoramas from various viewpoints.









We stopped at a high lookout with panoramic views of a luxury resort and a small island with an isolated shrine. There was a really imposing foot bridge across to the lookout shelter.


























We stayed the night in this beautiful little bay with singing crickets at Satsu just beyond Takeno and just short of Kazumi.

Audio mp3 of the Bell-like crickets at Katsumi

Sunrise at Satsu