Day 7
The gorge and the vine bridge
Morning
Ōboke gorge by canoe
The Yoshino is Japan's most celebrated rafting river, but the Ōboke section can also be paddled by calm canoe or kayak: two hours between sheer walls of folded schist, in deep green water. Quieter motorboats also run out and back from the landing stage, half an hour, for those who prefer to just watch. The rock layers visible from the water have earned the gorge its listing as a national natural monument.
Afternoon
Iya no Kazurabashi
Forty-five metres long, fourteen metres above the torrent, woven entirely from shirakuchi kazura vines: the deck is made of logs spaced fifteen centimetres apart, through which you can see the water below. It sways. Tradition holds that these bridges, of which only three remain in the valley out of twenty-six recorded, were built by survivors of the Heike clan who took refuge here after 1185, made of vines so they could be cut with a sword in case of pursuit. It is rebuilt identically every three years, with a steel cable hidden inside since the 1950s.
Evening
Biwa Falls and the Peeing Boy
The Biwa Falls, just past the bridge, drops fifty metres: the Heike used to play the biwa lute here to console themselves for their exile, hence the name. Further up the ridge road, the statue of the Peeing Boy, placed in 1968 on a rocky spur two hundred metres above a sheer drop, recalls how the village children used to dare each other to urinate from there. The vertigo is real.
