By now I don’t really remember why I chose Morioka as my home base for this five day tour of Tohoku. I’m guessing I just looked at a map and picked a random point somewhere in the middle, in which case why didn’t I pick Sendai? Well, Morioka seems like the better option because it puts me directly in the middle of the bullet train routes to Aomori and Akita. And so I booked a cheap business hotel and then looked for day trip options within the prefecture itself. There are many suggestions on Wikitravel but one that struck me in terms of accessibility and looks was Ryusendo Cave.
My elementary Japanese would only permit you to decipher Ryu as Dragon, and true enough you find this emblem almost everywhere at the entrance. Anyway, most of the useful info about the cave I found on its website: https://www.iwate-ryusendo.jp/en/about/ which gives you all the necessary trivia as well as practical info with regards to getting there, suggestions, and the like. They even have a Traffic Access tab showing you how to get to the site by plane, car, train, bus, etc. There is a direct bus from Morioka Station, free with the rail pass . I didn’t spend a single centavo and even got a discount for the admission fee.
The trip by bus runs 10 minutes short of two hours each way and is limited to four daily roundtrip departures. Morioka Station and Ryusendo serve as termini on either end. The bus was half empty when I went. There was a 10 minute stop at a grocery store in the middle of nowhere halfway through the trip for toilet breaks. If you don’t have a rail pass, the one-way trip will set you back JPY2,710 (~PHP1,040). Double that amount for the roundtrip price. The 9:10 AM and 12:10 PM departures are your only options from Morioka. Taking either the 2:50 PM or 5:50 PM bus means you will have to sleep in Iwaizumi overnight.
I took the 12:10 PM bus because I’m lazy like that, but this schedule gave me ample time to have lunch before hopping on the bus. Arriving at 2:25 PM, I had roughly an hour and a half to explore the cave before the last departing bus back to Morioka left at 4 PM. The cave itself and the museum are open until 5 PM only. Admission to one grants entry to the other at JPY1,100 (~PHP420). I no longer visited the museum because the cave was enough for me. Around an hour will suffice to go inside the cave and back, so one hour and 30 minutes will give you enough leeway for selfies and TikTok reels inside.
Ryusendo is known as one of the country’s three great limestone caves. Its location next to the mountains of Iwaizumi means lots of water. In fact, you will find an underground river and four lakes down there. Only 700 meters of the cave are available to the public and since this is Japan, those 700 meters are bound to be convenient. What’s waiting for you inside are wooden planks with steel rails as well as sufficient lighting, predominantly in the shade of blue when I was there. Temperature can dip to around 10 degrees celsius inside. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. It was cold, but I was down there for only less than an hour.
Bring a light sweater if your tolerance for cold climes is low. Raincoats are optional. Unless you fall into one of the lakes, the probability of you getting wet is quite limited to random drops of water from the ceiling. There is no getting lost inside because there is only one path to follow. The points where the paths diverge will just bring you back to the other at the end of your trek. If bringing selfie sticks, make sure that they are secure, because there is no getting them back if you accidentally drop them, or your phone, in one of those lakes, the deepest of which is 98 meters. Nice to look at but not so nice to fall into and drown in. Bruh.
There should be bats inside but they were on a late lunch break when I dropped by. There is a viewing deck or two granting a good view of the cave and some of the lakes. Other than this, there is really nothing else to see inside unless you are a cave enthusiast or you are a geologist in love with stalactites. Once you get back outside and you still have time to spare, you can just explore the immediate surroundings by the entrance where you have some streams joining the river with a water wheel and fishing locals in the foreground. Or you can check out the museum. After all, that is included in your admission fee.
[IWATE] Ryusendo Caves Daytrip
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