The Kano river flows down to the sea at Numazu in Shizuoka, but further up, it is formed from the rivers Nekokoshi and Hontani. We looked around the Kano river area right up to where the merger of the other two rivers give birth to it. Here's what we saw.
First, we went to an interesting rice field as it was the nearest to us, just outside Shuzenji. The field is there every year and is made from a lot of different varieties of rice. There's no parking, but a very large pavement opposite. Here are a couple of pictures of the field.
It was quite interesting, nothing special, but quaint and whimsical.
Next we moved on to Yugashima, a hot spring town, where the two aforementioned rivers form the Kano river. There's a nice walk around this area, over the rivers, and past various points of interest, such as a firefly brook. A few of the hotels here are right on the river and look like really nice places to stay, especially in Autumn, when the leaves are changing colour. We have now made plans to stay in one of these hotels, for that purpose.
After that, we made our way around some mountains towards the wasabi fields, stopping on the way to see a few beautiful terraced paddy fields. Unfortunately, we came at completely the wrong time of day and year.
Finally reaching the wasabi fields which conveniently have a small car park. The main bulk of the fields are separated by about a ten minute walk up a small road, but they stretch down the little river for kilometers. Its a pretty impressive sight.
I wasn't expecting much from the afternoon and I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't realise there were so many things to see in this area, nature and man coming together in a pretty friendly relationship for a change, and with the mountains all around, its an atmospheric, relaxed part of Izu.