I’m standing near the front of a 30-meter-long wooden raft a few minutes into a journey down the Kitayama River in northern Wakayama Prefecture’s Yoshino-Kumano National Park. Piloted by a team of four drivers in traditional straw hats, the craft snakes its way toward a white-water section of the river appropriately nicknamed the “Nose Dive.”
The raft plunges into the rapids, followed by a wave of water washing over the 20 passengers, who laugh and whoop with excitement. They said we’d get wet — and they weren’t wrong.
With a population of less than 400, the tiny village of Kitayama is the only place in Japan where you can experience traditional ikada-kudari (log rafting). It’s been on my radar for some years — I enjoy adrenaline-packed activities such as bungee jumping, tandem paragliding, canyoning and abseiling, but this was something unique: a natural rollercoaster through a remote gorge steeped in centuries of forestry history.
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