Ryūsendo Caves

This past weekend, Charles and I decided to head out somewhere near us. About a two-hour drive away from us are the Ryusendo Caves. This cave system has multiple interconnected underwater lakes. When we got there initially, we ended up parking in the lot near the campgrounds (we didn't even know it was there) and ended up walking down a short path to the cave entrance. By the cave entrance, there were some rest areas, a couple restaurants, a cute shop, and a really beautiful little river. There was even a guy you could rent a pole from and fish in the river. We didn't do that, though. 

Going into the cave, the temperature dropped drastically. It dropped like 30 degrees. Plus, there was water dropping from the ceiling. At first, I was a little annoyed at the gigantic droplets that fell onto my head, but towards the end, it actually felt nice. Walking in, the limestone walls were really beautiful, with the colored light shining on it. It wasn't too busy, which was nice. Walking through, there were nice wide areas where people were walking in both directions, but then the path narrowed to barely a person wide. In a few spots, you can look down into the water. The light in the water showed the different depths in areas. The sign had some of the areas as deep as 35m down. It was actually really beautiful to look at. 

I thought I was getting off easy with this trip. The last time I went to caves, I was with my first host family in Korea, and we walked down like a thousand stairs. I was beginning to think on this trip, it was going to be a nice walk through the cave. I was wrong. The path took us up the tallest chimney in the system. The stairs were so steep and wet from the dripping water. I was so relieved to make it to the top. We ended up having a view of some of the paths we went down earlier but from the top. It was actually really pretty. Going down...well...it was a tight fit. We were holding on to the handrails for dear life. Eventually, we came to a spiral staircase where the wall of the cave was so close overhead that we practically bent over sideways to get down. 

Once we got out of the caves, we explored the area a little. There were a few restaurants, a cute little shop, and a really pretty creek. So we got some lunch and took a walk by the water. It was so pretty. There were even a few people who had rented a fishing pole and were catching fish. That wasn't something we were very interested in, so we just kept walking. 

After walking around the water for a little bit, we saw signs for the Science Museum. The tickets for the cave included the museum, so we headed over. Let me tell you, this wasn't like any museum I had ever seen. First, there was no one over there. It was not staffed at all. You were expected to rip off the end of your ticket and put it in a box before you went in. It was actually kind of eerie. There was no one there. We headed in and found out pretty quickly that the 'museum' was actually another part of the cave system that had been separated by the river. There were signs on the wall that told you facts about the rocks and other parts of the cave system. Unfortunately, they were all in Japanese. But it was still really cool to look around. It was a lot narrower than the main area, but there was no one there except for the bat. It flew right over my head and Charles's. It was freaky. 

By the time we were finished at the museum, we were both ready to go home, so back down the path to the car, we made the two-hour drive home.