Going Places : Fukuroda Waterfalls

As I flipped through old papers and documents, I stumbled upon brochures of several places that I visited in Japan from 2008 - 2009. I guess there is no point of keeping those papers and letting them become old and yellow with time. But I can't just throw them away. The memories are precious and while it resides fondly at the back of my mind and in my heart, I thought that I might as well write a few things about it to share, as another way to preserve the memories and the information acquired through the visits (and I won't feel guilty recycling the written memorabilia...). So here is my first entry of the places, Fukuroda Waterfalls.

Date of travel : 21st February 2009

Organized by : JICA TBIC

Fukuroda Waterfalls in Fukuroda, Ibaraki Prefecture, is one of the famous, beautiful and powerful one in Japan amongst the other waterfalls  as Kegon Waterfalls in Nikko and Nachi Waterfalls in Wakayama. The River Taki flows swiftly through a 73 m wide channel over a drop of 170 m. This waterfalls is known as "four times waterfalls" because the water falls down over four big rocks, as in four steps. But it also refers to a saying that people should go to this waterfall four times in a year (meaning once in every season) to see the different beautiful faces of the falls. During the best time of autumn, you can see the autumn colours in trees surrounding the falls. And they say the falls present a different but equally beautiful face in winter, when the water become a cascading of ice.

The rest of the entry I will present through photos from myself and a few from my friends as we went there during the winter...however, at that time, we could only see a little bit of icicles here and there, not much of ice. But it was really cold.

Stopping over at Tomobe Service Area (like the PLUS R&R here..)

At the entrance to go near the waterfall

Omiyage anyone? (It means souvenirs..)

It was difficult to get all the four steps in one frame..

Regardless of age, Japanese really love climbing hills..I was surely out of breath!

In the middle of winter, it must be so beautiful when the leaves changed colours..

Smoked (..or roasted??) rice cakes and salted fish.

Yesss, we enjoyed it so much in the cold weather..very nice.

~The end~

(Photo collection from Titi, Nelson and mine.)