Ryūgashi Cave

photo by MH001 · CC BY-SA 3.0

A 74-year-old man dug it out by hand from 1981 onwards: 1,046 m of cave, with a 30 m waterfall inside.

In June 1981 Toda Sadao, aged 74, turned up at an abandoned stone quarry with a shovel, a wheelbarrow and a hammer: he believed Professor Shiozaki of Nagoya University, who said that beneath that rock there was ‘a buried flower’. In December, after he had forced open a narrow 10-centimetre passage by hand, his torch lit up the spray of a large underground waterfall. The cave opened to the public in October 1983: today the route covers 400 of the 1,046 metres in total, with the waterfall inside the cave and its 30-metre drop.

The cave formed in a limestone bed about 250 million years old, at the southern foot of Mount Ryūgaishi (竜ヶ石山, 359.1 m). Inside, the temperature stays at around 18 °C all year round. Besides the waterfall, the route passes through the chamber ‘of the water god’, lit in blue, and the chamber ‘of the phoenix’, where the stalactites form a kind of stone chandelier. It is one of the largest limestone caves in the Tōkai region.

ℹ️ Open all year, 9:00–17:00 (last entry around 16:30). Adults and high school students 1,000 yen, elementary and junior high 600, preschool children free; discounts for groups and schools. Combined ticket with Ryōtan-ji or Hōkō-ji. About 50 steps going down, one-way route; several reviews report that the floor is wet and slippery. The website states that a visit takes about 25 minutes; one review tells of an hour and a half, with a long stay in front of the waterfall. By car, 10 minutes from the Hamamatsu-Inasa interchange on the Shin-Tōmei; by bus, from the Hamamatsu terminal or from Kanezashi Station (Tenryū Hamanako Railway).

🚉 竜ヶ岩洞入口 · 6 min walk

Sources: doukutu.co.jp · doukutu.co.jp

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