Date: 19th May 2019

Yodo-no-Matsubara

In my previous post, we saw how the Shiraiwa Rock is seen from Yodo-no-Matsubara (Yodo Pine Grove), a grove of black pines which were planted during the Taisho period (1912-1926) by a youth-group from the Fukakubo area. About 10,000 pine trees are said to be planted here, some ageing up to 100 years.

The pine trees were planted here as part of a commemorative project aside from acting as a barrier against the strong incoming sea winds. The pine grove is really beautiful which made this a wonderful walk with the beautiful blue sea on the side. Its beauty is described by novelist and poet Sato Haruo in his essay “Utsukushii Umibe” (The Beautiful Seaside). Depending on the season, there are also alpine and seaside flowers growing here, which will make it more beautiful!

Tanesashi Natural Lawn

After the quiet walk along Yodo-no-Matsubara, I started hearing loud noises of school kids as I approached the Tanesashi Natural Lawn. As Tanesashi Natural Lawn is also a campground, there was a large group of students here (probably on school excursions) doing barbecue and the like. I quickly passed them to the vast natural lawn on the seashore. There were more tourists here and probably some locals having their Sunday picnic – can’t blame the crowd, it was such a great weather to be out in the sun.

The natural lawn which is right next to the sea makes it possible to explore the rocks around. I had a great time walking around the rugged rocks while trying to capture sights of umineko (black-tailed gulls). There seems to be a lot of them here as well, though less than what I saw in Kabushima.

From here, I was supposed to continue my hike to Takaiwa Viewpoint but after looking for various ways to cross the beach (I was faced with either wetting my shoes or walking through a whole bunch of umineko), I decided to end the hike here. From there, it was an easy 5-minutes walk to the Tanesashi Kaigan station. I am definitely going to continue this hike in the future when I have the chance.

Info

Useful sites:

• Tohoku Ministry of the Environment page. Here you can find details and map of each section of the trail. There are also details in the website on how you can obtain the trail map either by post or at some information centres.
• Hachinohe Section (Tohoku Ministry of the Environment) and Map
• Tohoku Pacific Coast
• Explore Tohoku Facebook Page – by Robin Lewis, one of the first hikers to complete the entire trail

Access

The start of the Michinoku Coastal Trail – Same Station can be accessed via the JR Hachinohe Line. It takes only 25 minutes (240 yen) from Hachinohe Station to Same Station. The Tanesashi Kaigan Station mentioned above is just two stops away from Same Station.

If you are not keen on walking and just want to visit certain spots along the trail, you can take the one-coin umineko bus which runs from Same Station to Tanesashi Kaigan Station everyday between mid April to mid November (only during weekends and holidays in winter). The bus details are in this page including the timetable.