Gyokusendo
Gyokusendo is a huge limestone cave in the southern part of Okinawa Island. It’s the second largest in Japan and the largest in Okinawa. Access is through the Okinawa World theme park, which is a very cheesy theme park made up mainly of shops where you can buy Okinawan crafts and foods. Sneakily, you can buy a ticket to both the cave or the theme park, or just to the theme park, but not just to the cave, heh.
The cave is over 5km long, with 890m open to the public. It takes about an hour to walk through if you’re taking your time. It’s quite spectacular as it has large caverns with forests of stalactites, an underground river complete with fish, eels and other wildlife, a huge limestone stalacmite “cup” that is constantly filled and overflowing with the blue-tinted water of the underground river and an awamori cellar.
We went inside as there was torrential rain outside, thinking we could be sheltered in the cave - but oh no. The dripping! The rainy season is in June in Okinawa and I seriously think that the growth of the stalactites and stalacmites is accelerated 500% during this time. By the time we got out of the cave, my camera was already covered in a chalky film from all the calcium-rich water that had fallen on it. Inside the cave you can see examples of where new stalacmites are forming on the tiled floor. They are only about 1cm tall but managed to reach that height in 13 years.
One disappointing thing about Gyokusendo is how many of the features are damaged or broken. I think that the park operators cut quite a lot themselves to allow for paths throught the cave, which is disappointing. Seeing an unbroken stalactite or stalacmite is actually somewhat rare inside this cave. There’s no guides, no signs declaring “DO NOT TOUCH” and the design of the path doesn’t discourage people from touching the features or breaking them off for souvenirs.
Still, I came out of there happy. it’s such a large cave with so much to see, and the fact that there’s yet another 4kms that’s relatively untouched is very exciting. Spend about 2-3 hours there, if you want to have a good browse around the surrounding theme park.
Links:
Japan Guide’s article on Gyokusendo and Okinawa World
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