Nikobuchi Waterfall

I hadn't heard of Niko Buchi until a friend mentioned it, almost as an afterthought, and even then it took some digging to find it. It's on the Edagawa, a small tributary that feeds into the Niyodo River, up in the mountains around Ino Town. I'll admit I went in expecting the photos to be exaggerated. They're not. The water really is that blue, and locals say a water god, a serpent, lives in the pool. Standing there, I got why that story has stuck around this long. Getting there Navigate to "Niko Buchi" directly rather than searching for the car park by name, or you can end up on the wrong forest road. From Kochi City it's about an hour to an hour and a half by car. From somewhere further out, like Sukumo, it's closer to three hours. A few years back, access meant climbing down holding onto a rope. That's been rebuilt since with a proper staircase, so it's a walk now rather than a scramble, though it's still enough of a walk that you feel it going back up. The walk itself From the car park it's roughly fifteen to twenty minutes down a moss-covered stone path. You hear the waterfall echoing through the valley before you see any of it. Normal shoes are fine, nothing technical, but there are stairs the whole way down, so it's not flat. One thing worth flagging: the flat ground right at the water's edge is small and it's bare rock, and it gets slippery fast once a few people are standing on it. We went on a weekday and had it mostly to ourselves. Was it worth it For the colour, yes. It's a small waterfall though, around ten metres, so don't go in expecting scale. A friend of mine cycled 100km with two others to get out there, stopping on the way at a café called Aogi that sits right over the river — by her account, that stop was the better part of the day. Her verdict after finally reaching the falls was that the water lived up to the photos, but the size didn't quite justify the length of the ride. We didn't have time to combine it with anything else nearby, and I sort of regret that now — Yasui Valley and Suishou-buchi (Crystal Pool) are both close by and get mentioned as a natural pairing with Niko Buchi.