Coastal Terraces in Tsuro

The steep forested hills of the Tosashimizu coast leave almost no flat land at sea level, so people over millennia have farmed the table-like terraces, called daba in the local dialect, that sit dozens of meters above the water. These formations emerged gradually from marine erosion and slow land uplift. In Tsuro, rows of camellia and shrubs have been planted along the terrace edges as windbreaks for crops. In neighboring Otani, the same landforms support rice paddies whose irrigation systems date to the Edo period. Walking here, you can see exactly how geography shaped a way of farming.