During our trip to Japan we went to one place we hadn’t visited before: Yakushima, a small island in the south of Japan, famous for its forests and hiking trails. It is said the the film Princess Mononoke inspired its forest on this island, and that is probably true, because once you venture into the woods of Yakushima you enter a magical place!
About a 1 hour flight from Osaka, we landed on Yakushima island and picked up our tiny car go to to our tatami-floored cottage, where we watched the Mononoke and Spirited Away movies and slept incredibly well, in the soft beds amongst the big cedar trees.
We spent two days hiking hiking and hiking, in Shiratani Unsui gorge, and in the funnily named Yakusugi Land. Sounds a bit artificial, but (apart from the first few meters) it’s the opposite: long, overgrown trails that wind through the forests.
The thing with Yakushima is that the trees are ancient. Some of the cedars growing there are thousands of years old. The whole forest has been preserved incredibly well, never been exposed to woodcutting or fires, and so it looks and breathes like an ancient forest. It is incredible to be there, you can really feel it.
There was an abundance of wildlife, not only many birds, there were deers and monkeys too!
The forests are crossed with rivers, and 90% of the time it rains there, but somehow we were so lucky that we had sun the whole time! It was very cold though, high in the mountains (we had to drive for an hour and a half uphill to get to the trailheads), but after walking and climbing for 5 hours you get warm :D
Beautiful, rocky rivers:
But the showstoppers were the trees. Some were so incredibly big, as if it is a huge ancient spirit watching over you
2500 years old.
Some of the trees had “faces”:
During our 5 hours of walking there was almost no one there. We were alone in the forest!
Not completely alone, there were definitely some forest spirits:
We both were quite in awe of this forest, it was such an impressive landscape and I think it is the most beautiful forest I have been in my life (and I have been to quite a few ones!) I think the fact that the trees are ancient, thousands of years old, and the forest has never been touched or altered, you have a chance to walk in an environment that has seen millennia gone by without change.
Yes I think we found this forest:
But! Guess what, Yakushima is not only beautiful, gorgeous forest. It has amazing beaches as well, where in summer the baby turtles crawl ashore.
I didn’t find a turtle but I did find this guy :D:
But if that was cool enough, you could actually see the nearby smoking volcano in the distance!
We had some of the best food on the island as well, fish was their main dish, and we had the chance to eat some flying fish.
It was a very.. spiky dish haha
After three days we flew back to Osaka, but will always remember this ancient mysterious island!
