Cape Iwaisaki
Low-lying Cape Iwaisaki was once covered by a sprawling windbreak of tall red pine trees. These were washed away in the tsunami that battered this coast after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. Today, the cape is a park with an expanse of green lawn where the forest once stood. The destruction is memorialized in a monument titled the Dragon Pine, cast in the shape of one of the pine trees that was twisted by the power of the waves into the angular form of a dragon. At the tip of the cape is a massive eroded jumble of dark limestone rocks, where the waves throw huge bursts of spray as they crash on the shore at high tide. The park also has a bronze statue of sumo wrestler Hidenoyama Raigoro (1808–1862) facing out to sea. Native son Hidenoyama reached the highest rank of yokozuna, or grand champion, at the peak of his career.