It was four years ago that I went on my last Journeys in Japan adventure. From 2013 up to 2019, it was an annual event. Then COVID-19 kicked in and the NHK World TV program was put on hold. I had practically given up on it, when the director of the previous episodes in which I had appeared contacted me by email in August and asked if I would be available at the end of September to go to Mie Prefecture.
The focus of the journey this time was Miyagawa – the Miya River – which is not only the cleanest river in Japan but also closely associated with the Ise Shrine, home of Japan’s premier goddess, Amaterasu. The shrine is a site worthy of visiting on its own; however, the chief attraction for me was the Osugidani 大杉谷 gorge. It is one of Japan’s top three most beautiful canyons.
One of the main points of the trip was the gathering of quartzite stones to place before the shrine structures. Quartzite is found in the Miya River and along the banks around the area, and the river itself flows along the Median Tectonic Line, one of Japan’s two tectonic lines. Part of the program story was that I would search the river upstream for the source of the quartzite. Yet as we were to discover, the geology upstream took us through other periods, and there was no quartzite to find. I had to conclude that the quartzite was prevalent along the river where it flowed along the tectonic line because the rock forms deep below the crust, and along the tectonic line, it is raised to the surface due to the uplifting caused by the interaction of the plates. Going into the mountains, we stray from the Median Tectonic Line and enter different geologic zones where metamorphic rocks, and later volcanic rock and also limestone appeared.
The program will feature stunning scenery and is due to be aired on November 14th on NHK BS and also will be aired a few times during the day on the NHK World web site and it will be available for view-on-demand for a full year from the original broadcast date.
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