The Wild Side of Amami Oshima

Spiny Tree Ferns at Kinsakubaru

Amami is a beautiful place, a sort of subtropical paradise, forested mountains in the middle of the ocean where people have made a relatively small imprint. There is water everywhere, and things are intensely green. We have cicadas and owls calling at night. Lizards roam freely around the house, and huge bugs abound. Whenever the hectic Amami big city life (40,000 people) gets me down, I need only to walk up the hill to be in the jungle (which the tourist brochure describes as "crowded" and "stifling"-no wonder why there aren't more tourists!). There are a number of parks all around the city, and there are hardly ever people in them. I guess they get a lot of federal money for development, so they have to spend it on something.

Right behind the house, I can climb a long crumbling staircase to the top of the hill to an old park. It seems abandoned, but I think they just let things go until it's officially summer, July 20th, and otherwise let everything get overgrown. This lion looks sadder every year.


Big slugs here.

and bigger snails.

Whenever I need a workout, I usually ride my bike up to Akasaki park, which is about a twenty minute ride straight up. I always have sweat running off of me by the time I get to the top, but then, it's a fast coast down. The brakes on my old rusty mountain bike aren't that good, but they slow me down enough to only make the ride down hair-raising and not suicidal.

There were a lot of these sword tailed newts walking across the road at the end of the rainy season, to their mating grounds, no doubt. Apparently, they're an endangered species, but they're common here.

These cool beetles were covering this one plant for about a week. This was the only kind plant they were on, and it seems they live their whole adult lives on it.

This bird is a Ruddy Kingfisher, one of the more beautiful birds here. Their backs are purple in the right light. They taunt me constantly with their calls, but usually I just get a fleeting glimpse as they fly by. They wake me up every morning. This one came out to sit on a wire and pose for a picture.
If I go another way at the saddle, I can go to "the virgin forest" of Kinsakubaru, seen above. It's about a 20 mile ride fom home, up over the mountain, through the park and down the other side. It seems a lot longer with the hills. I like to ride in the rain, since it keeps you realtively cool.

I finally got to a downhill section, and was cascading down the mountainside, bouncing off the rocks. When I got to the bottom of the hill, I noticed that I had a flat tire. I've got 9 patches on the tube it and it still leaks! I could just spend $10 for a new tube, but I always think, "I'm leaving in a couple of weeks, why waste the money." There was a giant wasp that kept chasing me and stinging me and would not let up. It was probably laying eggs in me. I guess I'll know in a few weeks when the adults emerge from my back.

There aren't many hiking trails that I can find there, and it seems most people walk along the road and read the plant labels (in Japanese). There is an old abandoned road down to the river, but it's totally overgrown and you have to bushwhack to get through. People keep telling me there are habus (poisonous snakes) everywhere, but I have yet to see one.

I don't usually see much wildlife there, but I did get a good look at this White-backed Woodpecker the other day.

There are lots of these irridescent damselflies flying around. In some places, the sky is just full of dragonflies and damselflies.

There's a gaijin that lives here who told me about this waterfall that's on the way down the hill. I rode right past it the other day without noticing it, but I was looking for it today, and there it was, visible from the road. I don't know how I missed it. Maybe because it was raining heavily earlier today, it had a higher flow and was louder. Maybe before I was going too fast down the hill to notice.

The road through Kinsakubaru is gravel, but this road going down is paved, in good shape, then turns to paved in not so good shape, then rough gravel again. I would think they would start paving from the highway, but no, there's just this long paved road starting and ending nowhere. Maybe they were going to finish it one day.

There is this old gravel mine on the gravel section, abandoned, all rusted and falling apart. You can find things like that everywhere in the forest here.

Well, that's enough for one post. I have a few more maybe, but we leave in a week, so we'll see what I get done.