Jodogahama and Sannoiwa

Decided to visit Jodogahama today, which is "Pure Land Beach". It's a beautiful beach area with some pretty cool rock formations. Jodogahama is about 175km (109mi) from Misawa and is along the Sanriku Coast and the city of Miyako. The weather forecast had looked promising, but shortly after reaching Hachinohe we encounter heavy rain and it was not looking good. Traffic was heavy (and slow) the entire way. We didn't even get there until around 1pm. I don't know exactly how long the drive took, but I think it was somewhere between 3-4 hours.

This was a scenic overlook area we stopped at...

These benches are interesting!

When we first arrived it was pouring about as hard as we have seen it rain here so far. We ate our lunch in the car and hoped that it would begin to lighten up, we considered leaving but saw a break in the clouds and eventually it stopped and the sun even came out!

JODOGAHAMA! Beautiful! Too bad we were worried about rain, otherwise would have taken one of the boat tours and been able to explore a cave.

Not really what I would call a "sandy beach"...

From Jodogahama we went to another scenic area named for the rocks found there: Sannoiwa, "Sanno Rock" or I've also seen a translation for "Three Kings Rock". The largest is Otokoiwa "Boy Rock", to the left is Onnaiwa "Girl Rock" and to the right is Taikoiwa "Taiko Drum Rock". Their heights are 50m, 23m and 17m. There had been a walkway down near the water, but this area was hit hard by the Tohoku Tsunami on March 11, 2011 and most of the walkway was destroyed or damaged.

If you look closely you can barely see what's left
of some stairs and a walking path.

Path is closed due to Tsunami 3.11.2011

Also found a little hiking trail so had to see where it led...

This was pretty extensively damaged from the Tsunami as well,
but he ventured down anyway.

Keenan checking out the waves crashing...

His view...

And that's me watching him from up top.

Looking at the stairs from the bottom,
looks like there was a railing at some point.

And a couple more pictures from our drive home...

This garden was intense, can't imagine how much time
that would take to create/maintain.