Princess Mononoke in Yakusugi Land

One hundred kilometers off the coast of Kagoshima is an island 25 km in diameter called Yakushima. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, which they let you know there at every opportunity. I guess Yosemite is one too, but I'd never heard that before I visited Yakushima. Seventy-five percent of the island is covered with steep, densely forested mountains that are supposedly snow-capped in winter, while the coast is subtropical, with coral reefs. It's famous for its ancient cedar trees, growing in an incredibly green forest that is one of the wettest places in Japan, which is really saying something. 

We took the jetfoil ferry from Kagoshima for the two hour trip to the island. This little girl at the ferry terminal took an interest in Theo. It was raining the whole time, and I took a non-drowsy seasick pill, which put me right to sleep. We rented a car to get to the place that Masami had reserved for us, a nice place with a tatami room that opened up onto a deck and a yard surrounded by trees. I went to sleep around 6 PM with the rain falling outside the screen door,  and didn't wake up until the next day.

We drove to the National Park, an area with developed trails called Yakusugi Land. It sounds like a theme park. Yaku from Yaku-shima (shima means island) and sugi- cedar. So it was like a tree Disneyland. It was still raining, and the moss was dripping wet. It wasn't bad under the thick canopy. The trails were well maintained, which is a rarity in Japan, where the steep hills and amount of rain regularly washes out roads, not to mention trails. The trails were originally logging roads, built 400 years ago. A thousand years ago, the ancient cedars (some three thousand years old) were considered sacred in the indigenous animistic Shinto religion. Around  the year 1600, however, a Buddhist priest advocated development of the island, including logging the sacred trees ... to make roofing shingles. So trees thousands of years old were logged for shingles. This priest is now revered as a saint. So basically, the hiking is past a lot of really big stumps, with an old tree here and there. But it still is beautiful, and the forest wasn't cleared, so it still is an old growth forest. The old stumps serve as nurse stumps, and younger trees grow on top of them as well as a mess of epiphytes. They are particularly proud here of this beauty created jointly between nature and their logging activities. There were many different kinds of trees and shrubs, but they were so intertwined and covered with moss that it was hard to tell one from another. The remaining big trees were all named, my favorite being the Bug You cedar.

We had some good wildlife sightings there. There are Japanese Macacques (monkeys) that hang out grooming each other, sometimes in the road. There were a few with babies. We heard some monkeys fighting in the forest, squealing like pigs. Those cute little furballs can be pretty violent. We saw a few of the diminutive deer of the island, some with fauns, and this buck, which came up to the parking lot. On one of the remaining ancient Yakisugi, we saw a green-backed Japanese woodpecker perched on a craggy dead branch.

Masami was pretty beat from the hiking, so Theo and I dropped her off at the inn and went to see some waterfalls. We saw two of Yakushima's great waterfalls. Senpiro is an 80 meter waterfall in a massive granite canyon, that reminded me of Yosemite. Yakushima is a big chunk of uplifted granite, like a piece of the Sierra Nevadas. We couldn't get very close to the waterfall as the trail was closed (rainy season, not summer yet on June 17). 

The next waterfall, Okonotaki, you could get as close as you wanted. At 88 meters, it was officially one of Japan's top 100 waterfalls (who decides these things, the ministry of falling water?). It was a gusher, completely drenching the little gorge into which it fell. Theo and I got soaked, and had fun playing on the rocks in the mist.

We stopped at a drive-through banyan tree on the way home and made it home for  our dinner of flying fish.

We had to move from our fancy inn the next day to a fancy Yurt down the road. It was a rubberized canvas yurt with bunks, carpeting, AC, cable tv. They were built by a retired mechanic who lived there with his wife. He was a very friendly guy and gave us a bowl that he had made out of cedar and gave me a piece to make something else out of. I tried to refuse, since I feel awkward receiving such gifts, and they were big, too and I didn't want to carry them, but Masami grabbed them up. She can never refuse anything that's free. 

Surprisingly, Masami was up for another long hike in the forest, this time on the other side of the island, to the Princess Mononoke Forest. This one had another pop culture tie in, as the inspiriation for the setting of the cartoon blockbuster. The whole area was called Shiratani Unsuikyo. This nice butterfly was trapped in a building at the entrance. The trail followed a swiftly flowing river up a granite gorge. The weather was better, no real rain, and the sun even peeked out once in a while. It was cool in the forest, and the path crossed water many times, through impossibly green ravines and over moss smothered rocks. The tree roots twisted around massive rocks, and there were trees you could walk through where the stumps they had grown over had rotted away. I didn't see anything particularly special about the Mononoke part of the forest, but at least it got Masami there. We hiked to Taikoiwa Rock  and got a brief view of the river valley below as the clouds parted momentarily.

We stopped at a tiny run down onsen Ohura by the ocean, caught the owner just as he was about to close up early. It was a tiny bathtub, but had a nice view of the coast, and we had it to ourselves, except for one guy who came later. The owner, a old wiry guy with huge glasses, let us stay and eat our dinner of instant noodles.

Masami had found some info on nesting sea turtles for us and made a reservation for us to go see them. We needed reservations because they only take 80 people to see them at a time. They have a well organized tourist deal there, where volunteers monitor the nightly visits of the turtles, then collect the eggs to hatch and release the babies. We got to Nagata beach early, watched the sunset, then waited, and waited ...

They started us off in a shack with a couple of sea turtle displays, then talked about the turtles a little, then showed a video taped off of tv, complete with commercials. It was blaring so that the people outside could hear. We were attacked by a huge emergence of winged termites that were attracted to the light in the trailer, and they kept flying into our faces and getting down our shirts. We realized after about an hour that they were playing the same tape over and over again, so we went to sit outside.

I could see volunteers hovering over huge dark blobs on the beach. We had to wait until the turtles were actually laying before we could go out, since they could be scared away if we went out sooner. I guess I would be scared too if I saw 80 people walking toward me on a dark beach.  So finally, after two hours of waiting, they took the only 50 or so of us (slow night, I guess) down to the beach and we paraded past a laying turtle. We actually got to see the eggs plopping out and falling into the sand pit. It was dark, and 50 of us were circling around this turtle as the volunteers shined these tiny pen lights on it. They really needed a big red spotlight or something, because the penlights only lit up a tiny part of the turtle at a time, so you had to use your imagination to picture the rest of it. But it was an amazing sight, seeing this huge turtle thrashing around in the sand as she buried her eggs, then scooted down to the ocean the full moon rose.

We left Yakushima the next day, and I was sorry to leave, not least because it meant our travels were over for a while, and it was back to Amami Oshima, Masami's home island, and a more domestic life, which will be the subject of the next entry in this blog.

Under the Volcano

Kagoshima is the last city on the mainland as you head south through Japan, and the jumping off point for exploring the southern islands. It's known as the Naples of Japan, with its very own Mount Vesuvius, called Sakurajima, across the bay. The volcano always smokes, and frequently shoots out ashes that rain down on the city. It's a pretty impressive sight to see this active volcano looming over the city, when it's not cloudy. Unfortunately the rainy season had caught up with us, so we couldn't see a thing. We had planned to bike around the volcano, which wouldn't have been much fun in the pouring rain. Masami's old P.E. teacher lived nearby, however, and she offered to take us on a car tour.

We went to an archaeological site and museum of the Jomon, Japan's prehistoric people. The site dates back 9500 years, so it consists of house foundations, cooking pits and pottery shards. The museum was pretty new and impressive. They had a village reconstruction, and we got to dress up like Jomon. Masami particularly enjoyed the videos of Jomon cooking school, cooking soup, eating raw fish with sticks. It seems Japanese cuisine hasn't changed much in the last 10,000 years. Check out the picture of Theo with the Jomon facial hair.

It was still raining, but we decided to give Sakurajima a shot anyway. We zoomed around the mountain, getting carsick, getting lost. We did see the cement torii (shrine entrance) that had been buried by a lava flow. We stopped for lunch at this place that was famous for making vinegar. (Everywhere in Japan is famous for something.) There were long lines of hundreds of clay pots of fermenting vinegar. We got a little tour, although we didn't do any tasting from the pots. They had an interesting way of sampling, which I saw another group do. The guide would scoop a cup of vinegar out of a pot, then use a turkey baster to drop some into the palms of people's hands. Then the people would lick their palms. It was funny watching the grimaces that the vinegar produced in the women. We did get some sweet apple cider vinegar in a shot glass to drink. I'd have to say it's an acquired taste. The lunch was good, although everything had vinegar in it, even the strawberry sauce for the ice cream. 

The highlight of the day, although I wouldn't have imagined it, was taking a bath. The time had come, as it does every trip, to get naked with a bunch of Japanese guys. I have learned to use the little "modesty towel"to shield my privates from prying eyes, after a few embarrassing situations where I'd walk into a bath and realize I was the only one without one. It's bad enough being the only gaijin around, but you know those dreams where you're the only naked person in the crowd? Well, that's pretty much it. But I've learned to cope. Taking a bath is a major tourist attraction in Japan, and people will travel all over the country to take a bath in certain places. I've never really quite understood that. A bath has always been just a bath for me, but Masami and Theo love them, so I go along. This one, Furusato Onsen, was probably the nicest one I've ever been to. It was an outside hot spring bath carved out of rock next to the ocean. It's no exaggeration to say that taking a bath in Japan is a religious experience, and here there was actually a shrine in the bathtub. A massive tree grew over the shrine, with exposed roots covering one wall. It was coed, and we had to wear cotton robes. The bath was not too hot, as they often are, maybe because of the rain. Theo and I stepped out into the ocean to cool off. 

There was another bathroom that was single sex, and we tried that out, too. We got dressed, walked to the other bathroom, then got undressed again and walked into the bathing area. I was a small room with a regular tub with about 25 naked guys in it. I opened the door and 50 eyes turned toward me. I started to step into the tub, then thought I'd better take another shower (you always take a shower before you take a bath in Japan), because I didn't want anyone thinking I hadn't taken one. Maybe the water in the other bath was considered dirty. Anyway, I just knew I was doing something wrong. The tub was way too small for 27 people, so we got out pretty quickly. 

The next day was rainy again, and we had some time to kill in Kagoshima. Sakurajima was still nowhere in sight, so we went to the aquarium. It was great. They had levitating dolphins, giant killer crabs, and sardines packed into tanks like Japanese people in a subway car. It was a good way to kill some time until our ferry ride to Yakushima, a Japanese world heritage site, famed for its ancient cedars. It  was a trip I was really looking forward to.

1400 Steps

One place I really wanted to see in Shikoku was the Iya Valley, one of Japan's three "hidden regions." Three is a magic number in Japan, so to be in the big three is really something. It's famous for its steep mountains, which is saying a lot for Japan. Japan is about 70% mountains, but they are so steep nobody lives there. They are all crowded onto the plains and the coast. The Iya Valley was remote enough for the Heike clan to find refuge in the 12th century after being ousted from power in a civil war. They built these vine bridges over the steep canyons, which are easy to cut when enemies are chasing you. There are two places where original bridges exist (although they get rebuilt every 3 years or so and are now reinforced with steel cables). They are major tourist attractions, but are pretty far out in the country. All of the sites in the valley are pretty far spaced, so we decided to take a Japanese tour bus. It was called the Bonnet Bus Tour. It was basically an old school bus with a GPS. I really admire these bus drivers. They have to be good to navigate these narrow, winding roads through the mountains. By narrow I mean just big enough for the bus to get through. There are a few spaces where the road is wide enough for a car to pass. So when we met a car going the other way, it would have to back up to one of these "wide" spots where it could squeeze through (See picture).

Our first stop was a boat ride on the Yoshino river. It was a deep rocky gorge, and we saw Japanese Narcissus Flycatchers flitting among the rocks. The boat ride was nice, but we just took a very short trip between the rapids. I guess the real way to do the river is a whitewater rafting trip, so maybe next time. Wwe had to sit on the hard wooden floor of the boat, which was pretty uncomfortable. I tried sitting on one of the floatation seat cushions, but was told that was not what they were for. 

Lunch was included in the tour, and the centerpiece was a cold dead fish. The whole thing was there, giving me a dirty look. since there was nothing much else to eat, I dug in, picking little flakes off the bones with my chopsticks. Trying to appear cool, I ate one of the internal organs, which tasted really nasty. I'm sure it gave me Hirohito's revenge later that night (Japanese version of Montezuma's revenge). I noticed the old lady sitting across from me didn't touch her fish. 

The tour was kind of a whirlwind type tour, with 20 minutes or so at each spot. We stopped at a gem museum, which was nice, but wasn't sure what it had to do with the Valley. We stopped at one of the Heike houses and saw how they lived after getting kicked out of Kyoto (not very well). 

The high point was the vine bridge at Nishi Iya. There was a waterfall there too, and some nice swimming holes, which we'll have to come back and try out. We had seen a reconstructed bridge at the Shikoku Village, but this one was a little scarier, hanging over the rapids with big rocks underneath. The slats looked plenty wide enough to slip through.

It was a long bus ride back, with a short stop at the "piss boy" statue (according to one translation), a statue commemorating a traditional spot for showing off your bravado by peeing off the side of the cliff. Theo and I really wanted to enhance our appreciation of Japanese culture by continuing the tradition, but Masami wouldn't let us. 

Masami had booked us into a nice traditional Japanese inn, with better food, and giant carp in a tiny pond that the landlady swore were goldfish sized when she put them in. I had nightmares about those carp climbing the stairs while we were sleeping, and woke up with a start when I swear I felt a wet slimy mouth closing over my big toe.

We left Shikoku the next day, but made one more stop on our way, at Kotohira. One of the most famous shrines in Shikoku is there. It's famous for all of its steps. There are 800 going to the shrine itself. Masami is trying to get into shape, so we gave it a shot. the first 800 weren't too bad, so we did 600 more steps to the next shrine at the top of the hill. It was a nice walk through the forest, and a view of the town below (I'd have to say that they had the better view, though). Theo actually counted 812 steps to the first shrine and 614 to the second. Lazier people can be carried to the top in a sedan chair hoisted by two guys. 

Being a major tourist attraction, the stairs were lined with all kinds of souvenir shops, wood carving shops, ice cream, Japanese sweets, and a sake factory with a Masami-sized bottle of sake. A wood carver let Theo carve a little of a big statue he was working on. Temples and shrines are major tourist attractions, and sometimes there are things that seem to be incongruous. Inside the shrine there were two funhouse mirrors, the kind that stretch you out or shrink you. What were they doing in a shrine? 

After that, we were back on the mainland, zooming along in the shinkansen (bullet train) to the end of the mainland, Kagoshima, in the shadow of a smoking volcano.

P.S. There are now full sized versions of all these pictures on the web, which you can see if you follow the link in the upper right hand corner of this blog.