Ryumon Falls — the 'dragon gate' — drops 46 meters in a curtain nearly as wide as it is tall (43 meters) on the Amikake River at Kajiki, in Aira, Kagoshima Prefecture. The fall marks the exact point where the river leaves the shirasu plateau of volcanic ash and pours down to the Aira plain, and the bedrock tells that volcanic story: columnar-jointed andesite, formed when Pleistocene magma intruded the surrounding strata and cooled. The setting is unusually open for a major waterfall — drivers on the Kyushu Expressway can glimpse it from the road. Upstream irrigation intake means its volume swings dramatically; in dry spells during the May-to-September farming season it can thin to almost nothing.
Visiting Ryumon Falls
The fall sits in open country at Kajiki, Aira, and is visible from a distance — even from the Kyushu Expressway. Ryumon Falls Onsen lies close by, and the surrounding 'Ryumon Falls Forest' area takes in the Itaide Falls upstream and the historic stone-paved Tatsumonji-zaka road to the west. Water volume is strongest outside the summer irrigation months.
