The best waterfalls in Kawazu

Kawazu Nanadaru was the "if we have time" line on our Izu itinerary, wedged between coastline and onsen towns that felt like the actual plan. We had time because a train connection fell through, not because anyone had pushed for it, and I went in expecting a nice enough walk through some trees. Half a day later it was the thing I kept bringing up for the rest of the trip, which is not what I expected to be writing about a set of waterfalls I'd almost cut.

Somewhere in the middle of the trail there's a small statue of a young woman, and I didn't clock what it was until I read a sign further down. This whole valley is the setting for The Izu Dancer, the Kawabata Yasunari novella that helped make him Japan's first Nobel laureate in literature. Nobody makes a big deal of it on the trail itself, no plaques shouting about it, just the statue and a river that's apparently been famous in Japanese literature for about a century, quietly getting on with being a river.

The water