Author Archives: Julie

Julie’s Highlights of Tokyo

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

There was no way this was ever going to be struck from the list, especially when we found out that one of the three exhibitions was the winning images from the World Press Photo 14 Awards. I find photojournalism thought provoking as well as often stunningly beautiful. Robin Hammond’s images of mentally ill people from various African countries in the aftermath of war or crisis still haunt me and I’m amazed by the courage that can take photos in circumstances like this:

Goran Tomasevic’s photo of a shell hitting the wall above rebels attacking a government checkpoint in Syria [image source: World Press Photo]

In stark contrast to the photojournalism, we also really enjoyed the exhibition ‘Presence or Absence’ showcasing the work of Japanese photographer Sato Tokihiro. He explores light in his art, which although quite different, reminds me now of James Turrell’s work that we saw on Naoshima. As well as images from pinhole cameras, he creates photos on a very long exposure with points or lines of light created by moving a flashlight (at night) or mirror reflecting sunlight (during the day) around in front of the lens. Knowing that much, it was interesting trying to work out how long an exposure would be required and how you would move to get the effect. I especially loved his images of trees.

Shirakami #5 by Sato Tokihiro [image source: Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects]

Kabuki

Kabuki is a style of traditional Japanese theatre. I really wanted to see a performance but was a bit skeptical about whether I would like, or understand, it. The Kabuki-za theatre in Tokyo allows you to buy same day tickets by the act which is a good way to get a taster without having to sit through (or at least pay for) a full 4 hour performance, typically 3 or 4 unrelated acts with intervals.

Kabuki-za theatre outside and inside, us ready for the performance to begin

We joined the queue outside the theatre an hour before the start of the matinee performance (and 30 minutes before tickets went on sale). It’s possible to buy tickets for consecutive acts and as the first one was only half an hour we paid for the second act too which was a more substantial 90 minutes. Inside we found seats at the front of the top tier and rented headsets which explained what was being said and the significance of some of the cultural references which would have been lost on us as non-Japanese.

Although kabuki was developed by a woman in the early 17th century, the shogunate soon banned female actors from performing, worried about their delicate morals, and to this day both male and female parts are played by men. The acting style is quite melodramatic with the actors wearing magnificent costumes and thick white face paint, it incorporates dancing and there are onstage musicians too.

Posters advertising kabuki performances outside the theatre

The two acts that we saw were very different in content. The first was more or less an excuse for a long dance sequence with a very loose story tying it together whereas the second had a complicated and extremely far fetched plot with more twists and turns than an Agatha Christie novel. We were gripped although without the headphone explanations we would have been hopelessly lost!

Cat Cafe

Not sure this one is strictly speaking a highlight but it definitely falls under the category of ‘memorable experience’. We’d heard about cat cafes before arriving in Japan and the concept was intriguing, a kind of short term ‘pet rental’.

Kitties at Nyafe Melange cat cafe

Nyafe Melange is just round the corner from the apartment where we were staying. Cleanliness and welfare standards seemed to be high (we were required to wash and disinfect our hands before entering the cat room) although, perhaps inevitably, most of the furniture had scratch marks.

Nyafe Melange cat cafe

It was kind of like sitting in the living room of the house of someone with a lot of cats, except that the cats weren’t as interactive or playful as we’d expected, most were sleeping on small shelves on the wall or in the sun on the windowsill, but the young woman running the shop was friendly, handing us cats and telling us their names. She even managed to coax a couple of them into chasing one of the toys.

Mocha regarding our affections with disdain

So, in summary, I’ve ticked it off the list, it was fine, I probably wouldn’t go to another one. That said, we saw a Moomin cafe in the shopping mall of the Skytree complex where you drink your coffee beside a giant plushy Moomin, and maybe I could be persuaded to go there…

Tsukiji Fish Market

Tsukiji is the world’s largest fish and seafood market. According to the Lonely Planet, a mind-boggling 2400 tonnes of seafood a day are moved through it. It’s possible to visit the famous early morning tuna auctions here but having done a bit of research it seemed like they are extremely tight on the rules and as entry is on a first come first served basis you need to start queuing from around 4am which is before the public transport starts running. Given all that and the fact that we’d seen the fish auctions during our market tour in Kagoshima we decided to give the auctions here a miss and just look around the wholesaler’s area which is open to the public from 9am.

Wholesaler’s area of Tsukiji Fish Market

It is vast. Just stall after stall of weird and wonderful fish and sea creatures. We wandered along one of the aisles trying not to get in the way and wondering if we would ever reach the back wall. Eventually we did and it was well worth it because there we found an area where four fishmongers were processing enormous frozen tunas, trimming and quartering them using a massive band saw. We watched, enthralled, for about 10 minutes.

Industrial scale tuna carving

An array of different shapes at Tsukiji Fish Market

The site holds more than just fish, there’s also a large area for fruit and veg wholesalers and various supporting businesses selling everything from handmade Japanese knives (if we were coming straight home I would definitely have had one of those) to scales to wellington boots, with a healthy dose of souvenir shops sprinkled amongst them.

The tiny restaurant where we had a super fresh sushi lunch

Of course the morning ended with a sushi lunch at one of the on-site restaurants. They’re all quite small (say 12-15 seats) and the queue for some of them was about 40 people long! As we were hungry and it was raining we went against our usual advice and chose the one with the shortest queue. It’s a good job we did, because we still had to wait for more than half an hour to be seated, but it was definitely worth it!

Ghibli Museum

Studio Ghibli (pronounced “jiburi”) is a Japanese animation studio which has been producing films since 1985. It’s not strictly necessary to know anything about the films before visiting the Ghibli Museum but we watched four of them in advance and were very glad we did as it put us in the right frame of mind.

The first adventure was buying the tickets which you need to get well in advance for a specified date and entry time. The most straightforward option for us was to buy them from one of the kiosks situated in Lawson convenience stores. It’s all in Japanese but there are what looked like comprehensive instructions with screen shots on the museum’s website. Suffice to say we had to ask help from the shop’s staff on two separate occasions until it gave us the promised receipt which allowed us to pay for our tickets…

The first character you meet is a giant Totoro, the tree spirit from ‘My Neighbour Totoro’

The museum is primarily aimed at children but there are plenty of magical things to keep big kids interested too. One of our favourites was the section on the first floor called “Where a Film is Born”, a series of rooms set up as animator’s studios packed with inspirational bits and pieces and with walls covered with artwork from the films. In a different area there was a spinning carousel which worked a little like a 3D flipbook (the fancy name is a 3D zoetrope) with character models in different poses and a strobe light to create the pauses.

Many of the museum’s windows contain stained glass decorated with characters from the films.

Museum details (clockwise from left): statue of the Robot Soldier from ‘Castle in the Sky’ on the roof, soot sprites from ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ trapped behind a porthole, the museum is covered in lush greenery

There is a small cinema onsite showing a 20 minute short which is exclusive to the museum. We saw ‘Looking for a Home’ which like many of Ghibli’s films features an independent and capable female protagonist. A girl packs her backpack with an unfeasibly large number of apples which she gifts to shrines, gods and animals along the way as she heads into the countryside for a camping trip. There was no spoken language in the film so it was easy to follow for everyone with just sound effects, it reminded me of the fantastic Pixar shorts which are shown before their feature films.

Tokyo Skytree

Tokyo’s TV and radio broadcasts used to be all transmitted by Tokyo Tower, a bright red Eiffel Tower lookalike, but as Tokyo’s urban environment got higher and higher it was realised that a taller structure was needed to send signals above the skyscrapers. And so Tokyo Skytree was born. When it opened in May 2012 it was the world’s tallest ‘free standing communication tower’ at 634m. And is still the world’s second tallest structure after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Tokyo Skytree

Judging by the miles of space cordoned off in the lobby they must expect a lot of visitors but it all looked rather comical at 9am as we walked straight through to the ticket desk past about six ladies in immaculate uniforms telling us ‘this way’ with not another tourist in sight. We ascended to the first viewing platform at 350m at the rather dizzying speed of 600m/min (over 22mph) – even faster than the lifts in the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

There’s a nice exhibit of Skytree models in the lobby, each made using a traditional Japanese craft method and embodying a facet of the design, e.g. Shinbashira vibration- control system based on ancient architectural techniques using bamboo and symbolised with a model made in bamboo craft – nifty, no?

As you’d expect the view from the observation deck is pretty spectacular. It’s said that you can see for over 70km on a clear day including a view of Mt Fuji. Unfortunately, it rained pretty much every day we were in Tokyo so I’m not sure that June and July are the right time of year to see that far.

The view over Tokyo from the Tembo Observation Deck at 350m

Just before the lift back to the lobby there’s a section of glass floor from where you can see straight down the tower to the streets below. It doesn’t look too bad until you notice the size of the lorries on the street in the upper right.

Eating at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant

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Having visited Yo! Sushi in the UK and seen pictures of conveyor belt sushi restaurants in Japan, we were curious about how the two would compare, so when the lovely Rio at our hostel in Kobe recommended a branch of the Kura Sushi chain we decided to take a break from the beef and give it a go.

On arrival we were given a small board with a diagram of the restaurant and arrows showing us how to get to the table. OK, they don’t even show you to your table, this is definitely going to involve less human contact than we are used to in restaurants… Our table was a small booth with the conveyor belt moving along beside it.

Can you tell how excited I am?!

We soon spotted the screen above the conveyor. Aha we thought, we know what’s going on here, we’d heard that you can order extra items using the touch screen so we settled into our seats secure in the knowledge of what we were doing… That all changed pretty quickly when we spotted a plate that we fancied moving past. We tried to lift it off, but we couldn’t detach it from the little train of two or three plates all with plastic domed lids. We looked around to see if we could take a cue from a nearby table. Nope, everyone was either eating or ordering from the screen. OK, we’ll try that then, why don’t we order a beer? So we scrolled through the menus until we found the drinks. Hit the picture of a glass of beer and sat back to wait. After about 5 minutes and another attempt, nothing had appeared so we collared a passing woman who was wiping down tables. “Biiru?” we enquired (yes, that really is the Japanese word). She motioned to the back of the restaurant and when Andrew went to investigate this is what he found:

A draught beer vending machine!. Insert a ¥500 coin, take a cold glass from the fridge, place it on the stand and press start. The machine tilts the glass, pours the beer with a perfect head and away you go!

In the meantime we’d figured out how to get plates off the conveyor, you just need to grip the edge and lift slightly to trigger the release for the lid. We’d got through a few dishes that way, it’s pretty compulsive choosing things from a constant parade, but we still wanted to order from the menu screen and have something delivered, this is how it works…

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QzsdGAu8I]

By this point we were accumulating quite a stack of plates, but we could see that the nearby tables were empty apart from plates with food on. What were they doing with their empties? We’d already noticed a kind of plate shaped post box at the side of the booth, maybe we put them in there? In Yo Sushi! the plates are different colours which signifies different prices but here they’re all the same ¥100 (about £0.60) or some dishes are double and come on two plates held together with a clamp so it made sense.

Disposing of dirty plates – I bet you wish you had a slot like this at home!

As we fed the plates into the slot we noticed a counter in the corner of our display incrementing. When it got to 5, there was a loud trumpeting sound from the screen and it started to play a little cartoon of a contest. We had no idea what was going on but it must have been a success because the hitherto unnoticed vending machine above the screen clanked into action and delivered us a prize in a plastic ball! It was a rubbishy plastic mobile phone charm, but still, we wanted another… The cartoon was activated on multiples of 5, but despite feeding in 10 and then 15 plates we didn’t see the winning version again.

Cartoon ‘contest’, you can just see the prize balls in the dispenser above the screen

And if you’re wondering what we had for dessert, here it is – banana toffee sushi :-)

We figured that the bill probably wouldn’t be brought to the table and that, with our little table number board that we received at the start, the cashier would just be able to pull up what we owed from how many plates we’d posted. But we missed out a step, at the till we handed over our table number which generated a little flurry of activity as the cashier called across to one of the cleaning ladies who bustled off in the direction of our table. I think we were supposed to press a button to let them know that we’d finished so that someone could check that the table was clear and all plates counted. We apologised for holding up the payment and in typical Japanese fashion, he brushed aside our apology and apologised to us that everything was only in Japanese – not many places in the UK would apologise for having inadequate translation into foreign languages.

Yum!

It was fun to see how mechanised the restaurant experience could be and at an incredibly low price too – we greedily ate until we were almost ready to burst but still spent less than £5 each (not including drinks). We enjoyed the experience so much that we sought out another branch of the restaurant in Tokyo, it was just as yummy but not quite the same without the adrenaline rush of trying to figure out how everything worked!

Temples of Kyoto

Kinkakuji

The one with the glitz

Kinkakuji, or The Golden Pavilion, is an iconic image of Kyoto and it didn’t disappoint. It is hugely busy and because of the volume of tourists you are constrained to a one-way route around the grounds which means that you have to move with the herd and can’t enter any of the buildings. Even so, we’re really glad that we went, even when you’ve seen photos the real thing is still utterly breathtaking.

Tenryu-ji

The one near the bamboo grove

Another busy temple, Tenryu-ji is situated in Arashiyama in north-west Kyoto, right beside the famous Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. The temple’s Zen garden is one of the oldest in Japan and has the same form as when it was designed in the 14th century. It is lovely and we really appreciated the benches and area to sit on the terraces of the buildings around the pond although there were a few too many visiting tour groups to make it a really peaceful place to pause.

Just outside the grounds of Tenryu-ji, Arashiyama Bamboo Grove was beautiful but smaller than we’d expected

Otagi Nenbutsuji

The one with quirky statues

Hint: two of these are not permanent fixtures

This temple is also in Arashiyama, just outside the main tourist trail area. It’s not in the Lonely Planet, we found out about it on another travel blog. The temple originally dates to the 8th century although it was moved to its present location in 1922, and the grounds contain 1200 carved stone figures of Rakan (disciples of Shaka, the founder of Buddhism) which were made during the 1980s by visitors from across Japan for the reconstruction of the temple. We loved that enough time had elapsed to cover them with moss so that initially they looked very old but on closer inspection the variety of expressions and accessories (tennis racket, beer bottles, walkman!) gave them an air of modernity. It’s a lovely peaceful temple, but also feels a little like an art installation, and is definitely one of our favourites.

Kiyomizu-dera

The one with the view

It seems as if this temple is on everyone’s itinerary, it was full of school groups as well as scores of other tourists, including quite a few Japanese dressed up in kimonos for the day’s sightseeing. Even so the main hall of the temple perched on a hillside overlooking central Kyoto is an impressive sight.

If you go we’d recommend stopping at Tainai-meguri before entering the main temple (go through the gate and up the steps, it’s to the left before you get to the ticket booth). It’s an unusual sub temple which you enter through a curtain into a pitch black corridor, following a handrail of large wooden prayer beads leads you to the centre of the temple and symbolises rebirth. Even with a group of giggling schoolgirls following us and stepping on the backs of our shoes it was a mystical experience.

Chion-in

The one with grandeur

Clockwise from top left: Andrew in front of the temple gate, the main hall under wraps, a large Buddha head in a sub-temple in the cemetery, the ‘big bell’

From the beginning you know that this is going to be an impressive temple. It has the largest temple gate in Japan, a self proclaimed ‘big bell’, and when the main hall is uncovered and reopens (scheduled for sometime in 2019) it looks as if it will be an imposing structure. But, for all that, there’s nothing brash about this temple, it has a quiet dignity and we liked how it seemed to be a working temple, minding its own business and almost ignoring the few tourists who pass through.

Its seven ‘treasures’ are explained in a display case behind the temple hall and the corridors linking the three main structures are fitted with nightingale floors, so called because they ‘sing’ as you walk on them. It’s thought that they were used as a kind of security measure so that intruders couldn’t sneak in.

Shoren-in

The one that looks like a country retreat

I still can’t quite get my head around this one being a temple. There is a line of massive camphor trees along the front shielding it from the street and the buildings are an interconnected collection of rooms with beautifully painted screen doors and views out into a peaceful garden. You really have to look for the temple elements – the Buddha images are modestly sized, there’s no incense and even the temple bell is tucked away in a corner of the garden.

Fushimi Inari

The one with lots of red torii gates

OK, strictly speaking this is a shrine not a temple, but you know what I mean… It’s located about a 30 minute bike ride south-east of Kyoto centre and extends all the way up the side of Mt Inari. It’s quite a long and sweaty hike to the top along a path almost entirely covered with thousands of bright orange-red torii gates with various small shrines along the way dedicated to the gods of rice and sake. We found the view through the gates to be really photogenic and it was much easier to find empty stretches the higher up the mountain we climbed.

Ginkakuji

The one with the amazing Zen garden (and not a glimmer of silver)

Ginkakuji means silver temple but, unlike at Kinkakuji, they never quite got around to applying the bling here. We arrived just after opening time to find the team of gardeners beginning a demolition job on the intricate raked sand Zen garden. Our next hour or so was spent sitting at the side and watching as with hosepipe, string line, special rake and a hefty boulder they reconstructed it. Even without the special experience of seeing how the Zen garden is engineered, the rest of the grounds are also beautifully kept (and busy) with mossy hillsides and glimpses into the temple buildings.

Honen-in

The one with the art

The Path of Philosophy

The Path of Philosophy is a canalside footpath which leads south from Ginkakuji. The next temple along it is Honen-in which the Lonely Planet highly recommended but which was nevertheless very quiet. There is a small garden surrounding the temple buildings as well as several pieces of art installed discreetly in the grounds. There’s also a dedicated exhibition room which hosts small temporary exhibitions. We enjoyed going in and speaking to the mother and daughter artists and an Australian artist who was also viewing, we even got a free cup of tea.

Honen-in (clockwise from top left): art exhibition hall, stupa in the grounds, raked sand, art work in a corner of the garden

Nanzenji

The one with the gate that you can go inside

Nanzenji also has an impressively large gate and it’s possible to enter this one. I found the ¥500 (£3) entry fee a little steep for the 20 minutes required to climb the steps and walk around but the view over the city is nice and the temple on the second floor is beautifully painted although unfortunately we could only peek through the windows and photos are not allowed. Afterwards we wandered through the grounds, past the brick built aqueduct and through a very quiet temple called Saisho-in to a shrine-temple in the forest built in front of a sacred waterfall.

Kurama-dera

The one on a forested hillside

The main reason we visited the small town of Kurama, 30 minutes north of Kyoto on the Eizan rail line was to visit the outdoor onsen, but an hour or so’s walk up the hillside through the various temple buildings and a picnic lunch with a view over the surrounding mountains turned it into a pleasant full day trip. The temple was pretty, but we highly recommend a soak in the hot spring waters as a way to relax your muscles after the hike up and back down the hill.

15 month summary

Countries visited in the last three months (1st April to 30th June)

Singapore, Japan (total visited to date on this trip = 14)

Have you managed to stay within your budget (£70 per day)? And what has been the expense breakdown?

Nowhere near, we knew before we departed that Japan would be expensive but it still came as a shock after a year of travelling the rest of Asia, although to be fair it’s probably no more expensive than travelling in Europe would be.

Our average daily spend over the three months has been £99.83. Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £69.67 which is exactly what we’d hoped – our savings to date were enough to balance the overspend in Japan.

Accommodation is yet again the biggest expense at 38.0% – for most of the time we stayed in business hotels which as a couple usually work out cheaper than hostels with the added advantage of an ensuite bathroom. The downside compared to a hostel is you don’t get to chat with the host or other travellers and there’s nowhere to prepare meals (not that all hostels have kitchens but some do).
Food is next highest at 24.0% – we’ve eaten really well in Singapore and Japan and while it’s possible to find relatively reasonably priced food it certainly can’t be described as cheap.
Intercity transportation was high at 18.5%. We had two flights in this quarter, from Dhaka to Singapore, and from Singapore to Nagoya (Japan). When moving long distances in Japan we usually travelled by Shinkansen, the famed bullet train. Very fast, clean and comfortable but not cheap. We kept costs as low as possible by taking occasional buses or travelling by local train when moving between nearby cities.
Local transportation was comparatively high at 5.2%. Although buses and trams are not too expensive (usually £1-2 each per trip) they do add up. We also did a few long distance day trips which were possible because of the speed and efficient timetabling of buses and trains, for example to Kamikochi from Matsumoto and to Ibusuki from Kagoshima
For the first time on this trip the visa spend for the quarter was absolutely nothing – no spend and no stress! Both Singapore and Japan allow UK passport holders to stay for 3 months visa free.

What has surprised you most in the last three months of travel?

If you listen to the continental Europeans or Americans they’ll have you believe that the British are plain weird for driving on the left, pretty much unique. Well, in the last 9 months we’ve visited no less than 6 other countries who also drive on the left (Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Japan) and while it could be argued that for some of these countries, though certainly not all, this is due to a colonial British heritage I don’t think we should let that detract from a good argument.

Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?

Not much to be honest. Travel in Japan and Singapore has been pretty easy, with all our creature comforts adequately provided for. Although we both love trying new foods we do get the occasional hankering for a good cheese sandwich or a plate of fish and chips.

What’s the most memorable sight that you’ve seen in the last three months?

Julie – I loved Okunoin cemetery in Koyasan. The huge cedar trees amongst the gravestones of all ages, the surprising statues that we came across and listening to the monks’ morning chanting all added up to an experience I won’t forget.

Andrew – My preconceptions about Japan were fast trains, commuter-packed metros and high tech everything, so the most memorable sight is the amount of greenery and scenic beauty here. Julie won’t let me have that as it’s not specific enough, so I’m going to pick Mt Fuji, the iconic mountain of Japan.

Tell us a funny story from the last three months of travel.

On our first day in Kanazawa we had lunch at Omicho Market and bought a small cake each for dessert before walking across town to Kenrokuen garden. Inside the garden we found a bench from where we could admire the view while eating our cakes. Suddenly, I flinched back as I caught sight of a bird seeming to swoop very close. When I turned to Andrew to see if he had seen it, he was looking in disbelief at his empty hand which had been loosely holding his cake. A Black Kite had swooped in and taken it without touching him! Since then we’ve always been very watchful when eating out in the open…

Who is the person you’ve met that you remember the most from the last three months?

Our host in Singapore, Diana, was such a pleasure to stay with. We booked her spare room through Airbnb and it was an ideal place for some R&R after the somewhat challenging travel through Bangladesh. She made us feel right at home, from her comfy sofas, fast wifi and well stocked kitchen (Julie seriously lusted after her top quality pans and knives), to her friendly conversation and introducing us to the TV programme Grey’s Anatomy which we watched avidly for a week! As an added bonus we discovered that she had lived in Japan for 6 years and didn’t mind us picking her brains. Her suggestions on where to go basically established our itinerary for the first month of our stay here.

Finally, what have you found to be the greatest challenge so far?

Julie – Struggling with the budget again. We’d really got used to staying in fairly nice places and basically eating wherever we wanted while travelling through SE Asia and into Bangladesh and it’s been a hard habit to break, needing to think twice about stopping at a cafe for coffee and cake, or whether to organise a packed lunch rather than relying on finding something while we’re out. We don’t compromise on sights and activities so accommodation, food and drinks tend to be where we try to save money.

Andrew – We’ve found that booking last minute budget accommodation as a couple has been hard in Japan, especially as we usually want to stay for three or four nights. It seems that as well as all of us foreign tourists, the Japanese also like to travel a lot, which meant we had to quickly firm up our plans and start booking 3 to 4 weeks in advance, rather than the 3 to 4 days we’ve been used to so far!

Yakushima, Japan

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While we were chatting to the owner of the hostel where we stayed in Nara and telling him our rough plans for our travels in Japan he asked if we’d heard about Jomon Sugi, a really old tree in the centre of an island off the south coast of Kyushu. Well, we hadn’t but it sounded intriguing and after a little more research we found that the name of the island is Yakushima and that 20% of it has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site on account of the value of its ancient cedar forests. It was quickly added into our itinerary.

Yakushima’s location [Image source: Yakumonkey]

Several weeks later we had made our way as far south as Kagoshima. Our final day in the city was grey and rainy so it was a pleasant surprise when we woke the following morning to blue skies and bright sunshine. Especially pleasant as we had a four hour ferry journey ahead of us which really wouldn’t be nice if it was windy and raining.

Yakushima is 60km south of Kagoshima and there are three ways to get there, flight (very fast and very expensive), hydrofoil (takes about two hours and more moderately priced) and car ferry (takes twice as long as the hydrofoil and is half the price). We opted for the cheapest option but would recommend it to others if they have the time. The ferry was comfortable, uncrowded and Andrew was thrilled to discover that there’s an onboard sauna, although he didn’t get chance to make use of it.

The end of the Satsuma peninsula seen from the ferry to Yakushima. The conical mountain in the centre of the photo is Mt Kaimon-dake.

As the ferry approached Miyanoura port we were delighted to see flying fish scooting away from the ship (and stunned at how far they can travel). I was also surprised by how mountainous the island looked and began to feel a little nervous about the long walk to the old tree which we planned to do the following day.

Our first stop was the tourist office where picked up what has to be my favourite information handout ever – an A3 sheet with a map of the whole island, all the bus stops, points of interest and a complete bus timetable for all the routes – an obsessive travel planner’s dream tool! Next we wandered along the main street in search of lunch, eventually settling on Satchan where the friendly waitress managed to translate enough of the menu for us to decide on a set meal of Yakushima specialties. It was a delicious feast of sashimi, fishcake and grilled fish although the fact that it contained lots of flying fish made us feel a little guilty after admiring them so much from the ferry…

Excited to dig into our lunch!

Yakushima is famous for its ancient cedar forests and also has the rather dubious honour of being the wettest place in Japan receiving up to 10,000mm of rainfall per year. To put that into perspective, the wettest town in Britain, Dalness in the Scottish Highlands, gets an average of 3,300mm per year. Yes, that’s right, this place is three times wetter than Scotland! We had our fingers crossed for a dry day for the walk up the mountain and the forecast looked promising.

You can tell how wet the climate is by the amount of moss in the forest

Our accomodation was a one hour bus ride from Miyanoura which Andrew managed to sleep through while I followed the route closely with my new favourite piece of paper. Alighting from the bus we found ourselves in the company of two other travellers, Brian from New York and Claudia from Zurich, and quickly realised that we were all staying at the same guesthouse. We spent the rest of the evening talking them into the early start that was necessary to join us for the 10 hour hike to Jomon Sugi. The only public transport option to the Arakawa Trail Head meant that we had to get up at 4.30am…

Brian, Claudia, Julie and Andrew looking pretty chipper at the start of the trail at 6.45am

The first three-quarters of the trail are not too challenging. The path is along an old logging railway and the incline is very gentle although the distance is long (just over 8km or about 5 miles). We were by no means the only group to be doing the hike although most of the others seemed to be small groups of mostly middle-aged Japanese ladies with tour guides. Everyone was very friendly and by the end of the day, having passed each other numerous times, we almost felt like honorary members of some of the groups!

Walking the railway line

Us with a slice of the trunk of a felled cedar at the site of an abandoned loggers’ village part way along the trail.

The last section of the trail is only 2.7km (about 1.7 miles) but it is steep and the path is a combination of steps, boardwalk and twisty tree roots so we really needed to watch our step. This is close to the highest part of the island, where the old growth forest still survives. There are many old trees along the path and a couple of stumps too. Wilson’s Stump is big enough to fit about eight people inside and, when looked through from the right angle, the view up to the canopy from its centre is heart shaped.

The last part of the trail seemed to be a never ending series of steps

Andrew checking out the height of one of the ancient cedar trees

After seeing some incredible huge trees we thought that Jomon Sugi might be a bit of an anti-climax, but when we arrived it made us gasp. It’s the largest cedar ever found in Japan at 25.3m tall and 16.4m in circumference. Estimates of its age range from 2,170 to 7,200 years old, based on a scientific sampling of the trunk, and an estimate from its size respectively.

Us with Jomon Sugi. Unfortunately this is as close as you’re allowed to go to prevent erosion around the tree’s roots.

After stopping for lunch, we then had to turn around and do it all in reverse. We just pressed on to get the hard part over and done with quickly and we were back on the railway line in about an hour and a half from where, even with tired legs, the going wasn’t too bad. Highlights of the walk back were seeing deer and a couple of monkeys (both sub-species indigenous to Yakushima) and also a brief stop away from the track at the riverside – the water is crystal clear and looks wonderfully turquoise blue in the sunlight. I was very tempted to give my feet a soak but eventually decided against it worried that once off, I might not be able to get my boots back on!

At the river in the afternoon sunshine

At last we made it back to the trail head in time to catch the bus back to the guesthouse. All four of us exhilarated but exhausted.

You’d think that after all that exertion we’d take it easy the next day but we only had two full days on Yakushima and we wanted to make the most of it so we hired bikes from the guesthouse and set off to explore the southern coast of the island. After picking up a picnic lunch, we made our way to Hirauchi Onsen to coincide with low tide. This hot spring bath is very much au natural, the sulphurous spa water bubbles up from beneath the rocks and is contained in crude concrete baths. It’s so close to the sea that it can only be used for a few hours either side of low tide.

Hirauchi Seaside Onsen

The onsen was exactly what we needed to ease our aching muscles and it left us feeling so relaxed that we thought we might go straight back to the guesthouse, but after a bite of lunch and a sugary drink we had a bit more energy and decided to carry on to see if we could reach the waterfall marked on our map. Turns out it was a bit further than we’d expected, but by the time we’d realised we were only a few kilometres away and so we pressed on.

Ohko-no-taki waterfall with a drop of 88m was much more impressive than we’d expected especially considering that it was the end of the dry season.

By the time we got back to the guesthouse we were completely exhausted and when we worked out that we’d cycled a total of about 50km we joked that all we needed now was to swim back to Kagoshima and it would be like a three day triathlon! In the end though we decided to get the ferry instead…

Yakushima’s southern coast (clockwise from top left): Mountainous scenery above the bridge at Kurio, a very strange house, beach at Nakama, a huge banyan tree

One of the very few things that we don’t like about travelling in Japan is that reasonably priced accommodation can get booked up fast and so we’ve found it necessary to have our accommodation booked well in advance. This denies us the flexibility to stay in places that we really like for longer than our initial estimate. We could easily have stayed on Yakushima for a week, gradually exploring the whole island and chilling out in its quiet greenness but unfortunately it wasn’t possible this time. We also started daydreaming about island hopping between the remote and small inhabited islands even further south so I think there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be back!

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures