Tojinbo Cliffs

Tojinbo is a line of cliffs on the coast of Sakai, running about a kilometre along the Sea of Japan. It is designated a Place of Scenic Beauty, and together with the island of Oshima off its end it is a Natural Monument.

The cliffs are columnar jointing, rock split into upright columns as it cooled. What makes this stretch unusual is the rock it happened in: dacite, in which columns on this scale are said to occur in only three places in the world. The cliffs are walked along the top, where the columns can be seen dropping into the water.

A boat runs from below and takes about half an hour, going along the foot of the cliffs and showing them from the sea. There is also a tower behind the shore, from which the coast can be seen as far as the Noto peninsula on a clear day.

The sea does much of the work. In summer the water is flat and blue under the cliffs; in winter the waves come in hard against the rock and the wind with them.