Nunobiki Falls

photo by Daniel Lu (User:dllu) · CC BY-SA 4.0

You can see the 43-metre waterfall for free, 15–20 minutes on foot from Shin-Kobe.

The trail starts next to Shin-Kobe Station and follows the Ikuta stream: in ten minutes you reach the first waterfall, 19 metres high, and if you climb another twenty you find the largest, the Ontaki (‘male waterfall’), 43 metres high, where legend has it that the princess of the dragon palace hangs her robes out to dry.

The four drops of the Ikuta stream run down the side of Mount Rokko and have been mentioned since at least the Heian period: they appear in the Ise Monogatari and the Eiga Monogatari, and court poets such as Fujiwara no Teika put them into verse. A national campaign in 1990, sponsored by the then Environment Agency (now the Ministry of the Environment), included them among Japan's hundred most beautiful waterfalls. A little further upstream, on the same trail, stands the Gohonmatsu Dam: Japan's first concrete dam, completed in 1900 and designated an Important Cultural Property in 2000, a designation that covers the dam, not the waterfalls.

ℹ️ Free and open access, during the day: the trail is a mix of asphalt and steps, you need comfortable shoes, and after sunset it is not lit. You can see the lower waterfall in 10–15 minutes from the station, the largest in another 15–20; carrying on, you reach the dam and, if you like, the herb garden at the top of the mountain.

🚉 Shin-Kobe · 11 min walk

Sources: ja.wikipedia.org · city.kobe.lg.jp · faq.city.kobe.lg.jp

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