Natural Monument since 2014: the Yoshino River has cut for kilometres through blue-green schist.
The Yoshino River runs narrow between walls of mottled green-blue schist, the ‘Awa blue stone’, smoothed into rounded shapes over about 6.5 km of its course. An open boat leaves right from here and goes upstream for about 4 km in half an hour, passing beneath walls that in places close in to within a few metres of the water. The central stretch, 1.1 km long, is designated a national Place of Scenic Beauty.
Gorge carved out along the upper reaches of the Yoshino River, Miyoshi municipality: the rock formation belongs to the Sambagawa metamorphic belt. National Natural Monument since 18 March 2014, Place of Scenic Beauty (名勝) since 7 October 2015, extended to the Koboke section on 13 February 2018. The JR Dosan Line runs through it, with its own station (Ōboke).
ℹ️ The sightseeing boat (boarding at Yamashiro-cho Nishi-u, Miyoshi municipality) runs from 9:00 to 17:00 (last departure 16:30), about 30 minutes over a 4 km route; adults ¥1,800, children ¥900, open all year except in strong wind or flood. The gorge can also be seen for free from National Route 32 and from the train on the JR Dosan Line.
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Iya Onsen8.8 kmphoto by As6022014 · Public domain
Iya Kazurabashi9.3 kmphoto by Yamato · CC BY-SA 3.0