Yakushima: So Hard To Leave

I really didn’t want to leave Yakushima. Honestly, stepping onto the ferry back to Kagoshima was a wrench. The sun was blazing, the mountains looked so pretty in the distance and I had the overwhelming feeling that I’d probably never come back.

A misty Yakushima on our arrival.

A while back I asked a Japanese friend where in Japan she’d go if she could choose anywhere. She chose Yakushima “because it’s unique and it's a world heritage site”. Now admittedly, I blanched slightly at finding another example of the undue reverence given to UNESCO, but it still acted as a motivator. She was someone whose opinion I trusted and she reckoned Yakushima was amazing. I was getting urges. I resolved to persuade K Chan that we should go. Whatever it took.

K was a bit freaked out by standing so close to the barrier.

K Chan’s response was “Ben-I’ve been the one saying we should go for Yakushima for the past 8 months and every time I mention it you’ve forgotten the name of the island and I have to explain to you again where it is and what it’s like”. So er, persuading her wasn’t difficult. A brief relationship crisis was avoided by me deciding at the last minute not to go there on my own last month. In retrospect, this was a wise choice, even if I didn’t know that at the time.

My legs appear very long in this photo.

Yakushima is in the far south of Japan. It takes about 2 hours by ferry from Kagoshima. I enjoyed the ferry journey because they were showing a game-show in which a variety of dogs competed against one another in a series of increasingly difficult tasks, soundtracked by a bewildering array of hammond organ sound effects. It has a population of about 15,000 people who mainly live along the coastline. The interior of the island is mountainous and covered in dense forest. The island has an unusual weather pattern which is ultimately what makes it unique. Essentially, it’s famous for its high rainfall, the highest in Japan. This is particularly severe in the centre of the island which has an entirely different weather pattern from the shoreline. The end result of this is a beautiful, moss covered forest full of thousand year old cedar trees, waterfalls, rivers, unusual rock formations, deer and monkeys. Though rainfall is frequent, it is not so common that you can’t enjoy your time on the island. During our time there, it rained once, lightly, for about ten minutes. Most of the time it was perfect hiking weather and on the final day it was comfortably warm. The sea is the clearest I've ever seen.

We had some problems when booking accommodation on the first night. This meant that we ended up staying at a guesthouse above a fishing tackle shop, next to a pachinko parlour. The tatami was damp and worn, the water in the toilet ran all night due to some plumbing fault or other. It wasn’t an especially comfortable place. I made up for this by binge-eating peanuts and wandering around town in an aimless manner. Meanwhile, K-Chan had been knocked out by the anti seasickness tablets which she had so recklessly imbibed hours earlier in an attempt to ward off the routine that had haunted many a long ferry journey in the past. She woke to find me red-eyed, covered in crumbs and pistachio shells, looking every inch the catch that I am.

I really like this photo, but can't quite explain why.

Packed lunch sorted, car hired, wet weather gear packed, we headed out for our first hike of the holiday. This was a simple 3 hour wander in an area called Shiratani Unsuikyo. The start of the walk was spoilt slightly by being along a paved route that had been built into the forest floor. Only Japan would do that! But as you got deeper into the woodland, the concrete gave way to a more attractive footpath, properly maintained and well signposted, making it almost impossible to get lost. Every time we turned a corner we would see something beautiful. It was lilke walking through a series of postcard scenes. The walk itself was never too demanding, but long enough that it felt like a proper day’s work and quite an achievement. Every surface in the forest was covered in green moss and we encountered few other hikers, making it a romantic way to spend an afternoon.

The rental car broke down as we descended the mountain. Now, when I say “broke down”, I mean that the brakes failed as we drove at 40 km/hour down the slope. It was slightly scary stuff and I was fortunate that it happened at a relatively convenient moment. Thankfully, by a combination of helpfulness by a local shopowner and some amazingly well co-ordinated customer service, we were all set with a new car within half an hour. Go Japan!

Leave the biscuits alone.

That evening we arrived at our new accommodation. It resembled a more stylish version of Butlins. Wood cabins were dotted around the grassy site and the owner, whose English was excellent, gave us an incredibly friendly welcome. We chilled and watched Duncan Jones’ Moon which I wasn’t quite in the mood for, but was still bloody impressive. I loved all the shots of him driving across the moon’s surface and it gave me ideas for my next holiday…

You've gotta do the moody beach shot, right?

The owner of the Butlins camp was so friendly.

Yakisugi Land sounded like it would be a tacky theme park but was in fact an area of dense cedars, perhaps even more impressive than those we saw on the previous day. On our drive up the hill, we spied a troupe of monkeys, sat at the side of the road, giving each other a wash. Later, when having lunch in the middle of the forest, we spied another monkey happily getting its own lunch in the trees above us. The monkeys and deer in Yakushima are not especially shy of humans and it was great to see them close up, though you have to be careful not to tempt them with any food you might have on your person. K was a bit put out that she was unable to eat her banana in peace and had to hide it as soon as we saw the monkey above us. We have form with monkeys as one cheeky specimen stole some biscuits from us once in India and our relationship with the species never truly recovered after that.

I didn’t want to leave. The owner of the wood cabins introduced us to his family. It turned out that his wife was from Okayama, about an hour from my apartment. It also turned out that he had been building the cabins himself over a period of 5 years. I’m constantly amazed by the levels of practical skill I come across in Japan that far exceed anything you see in the UK. I’d personally struggle to change a fuse, let alone build a wood cabin.

But yes, going home was a struggle. Yakushima is the most beautiful, romantic and unusual place that I've seen in Japan so far. Just thinking about getting on the ferry back to Kagoshima makes me sad.­