Kitayama Village: A Community with Unique Charms

Kitayama Village lies deep in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula in central Japan. It is a small village, with a population of about 450. Some 97 percent of its area is covered with thick forest. In the old days, the main industry was forestry, and the lumber cut in the mountains used to be transported to the coast by assembling the logs into rafts and floating them downstream on the Kitayama River. Around 40 years ago, the village decided to revive that tradition and offer tourists the opportunity to ride down through the rapids on similar log rafts. Kitayama Village is the only place in the world that offers visitors an experience of this kind. The local specialty is a variety of citrus known as jabara, which only grows in the valley around Kitayama Village. This fruit has a distinctive flavor and is made into a wide range of products that make up a source of income for the village. On this edition of Journeys in Japan, DJ George Cockle visits Kitayama Village to find out what makes this small mountain village so unique.