Japan
Yakushima
Ancient cedar forest wrapped in mist where roots swallow granite boulders whole.
The moss starts at the shoreline and never stops. On Yakushima, an island south of Kyūshū's tip, ancient cedar forest climbs from sea level into clouds that drop more rain than almost anywhere else in Japan. The air is so thick with moisture that every surface — every rock, every root, every fallen trunk — wears a coat of luminous green.
Yakushima's Jōmon Sugi cedar is estimated at anything from two thousand to seven thousand years old, which puts it among the oldest living trees on Earth. UNESCO inscribed the island's interior in 1993 for a primeval forest where subtropical lowland species and near-subarctic highland species share a single mountain. Hayao Miyazaki drew on these mossy forests for Princess Mononoke. Between 4,000 and 10,000 millimetres of rain fall each year, which is why islanders say it rains thirty-five days a month.
Solo
The long walk in to Jōmon Sugi strips everything back to footsteps and breathing, and the unstaffed mountain huts mean carrying your own supper. Solo hikers find the forest's silence confronting at first, then addictive.
Couple
A seaside hot spring that only appears at low tide, eco-lodges under the canopy, and the shared effort of a dawn start into the moss make Yakushima quietly romantic.
- The Jōmon Sugi cedar stands nine to ten hours' walking there and back through moss so thick it muffles footsteps.
- Shiratani Unsuikyō's mossy ravine is the forest said to have inspired Princess Mononoke.
- Loggerhead turtles come ashore to nest at Nagata Inakahama between May and July — the beach the national park calls the home of the sea turtles.
- Hirauchi Kaichū Onsen is a hot spring in the shoreline rocks that the sea covers twice a day.
Flying fish, the island's own catch, deep-fried whole with the wings fanned out or dried on racks along the harbour.
Yakushima venison, from deer that outnumber the islanders, grilled at village izakaya once you are off the trails.
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Cape Tribulation
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Rainforest runs out of land where mangroves, beach and reef coast collide.
Tatami Ridge (Kumejima)
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Hexagonal basalt slabs stretching into turquoise shallows like a giant's abandoned floor.
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Vine bridges swaying over gorges so deep the river sounds arrive late.
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A harbour so intact that Miyazaki lived here two months and drew Ponyo's world from it.