Back in December Kyoko and I made our first trip down to Fukushima Prefecture. Our destination: Takine, home to Abukuma Cave, the only limestone cave open to the public in Japan.

The drive took about 2 1/2 hours, with most of the trip taken on the Tohoku Expressway. Abukuma cave was only discovered in 1969. About 600m of the cave is open to the public, with another 2500m off limits. Basic admission gives you access to most of the public area; from inside the cave system you can also access some very tight and narrow caves for an additional fee. We coughed up the extra dough so we could crawl under and squeeze around the formations, getting some nice close looks at the intricacies of the limestone. Claustrophobics need not apply.

Near the end of the alternate route we began to hear… music. It seemed a little tacky that they would be pumping tunes into the cave, but the music was sounding quite nice, so we walked toward the sounds…

Upon entering the main cave (”The Takine Palace”) we discovered the source of the music — a brass band! We caught the end of their show, which included some Christmas tunes. Needless to say the acoustics in the cave were amazing. It would definitely be a great place to have a big party, except for the fact that people would probably get too drunk and impale themselves on the stalagmites or something. Check out the video on the sidebar, or click here.

After thoroughly exploring the rest of the Palace we headed back outside to the cold. We considered checking out the planetarium show, but about an hour away there was a waterfall that we see before darkness came…