Geibikei Gorge

Geibikei is a limestone gorge on the Satetsu River with walls rising to about fifty metres, and the way to see it is a wooden flat-bottomed boat poled upstream for a couple of kilometres by a single boatman standing at the stern. It is slow and quiet - there is no engine - and the trip takes about ninety minutes there and back. At the turning point everyone gets out onto a gravel bank, where there is a hole in the rock face across the water and a stall selling small clay pellets called unpuku-dama that people throw at it for luck; almost nobody gets one in. On the way back the boatman sings the Geibiki oiwake, and the sound in the gorge is the part people remember. The walls are pale grey limestone with pines growing out of ledges, and the water is clear enough to see the bottom.

What you actually see

• A poled boat - no engine, one boatman standing at the stern.
• Fifty-metre limestone walls - pale rock with pines on the ledges.
• The luck stones - clay pellets thrown at a hole in the cliff from the gravel bank.
• The return song - the boatman singing unamplified on the way down.

When to go

Late October for colour; April to November otherwise. Two hours.

Honest expectations

Boats fill and depart on a schedule - waits are common in season. Commentary and song are in Japanese. Trips are suspended in high water. Winter boats are enclosed, which limits the view.

Nearby

Genbikei, a different gorge with the same reputation, is west near Ichinoseki.