Of Moss and Mountains...

Of all the places I had been slathering over in my faithful Lonely Planet before I came on the trip, Yakushima was one of the top spots. A small island off the southern tip of the country, it has long been held in reverence by the Japanese for its mystical atmosphere, medicinal plants, ancient cedar trees, and above all, it's mountains - held to be the home of the Gods. Sub-tropical at sea level, its mountains rise formidably out of the Pacific, interrupting the warm wet air flowing in from the south and creating a climate where 8000mm of rain falls each year - 35 days a month, as the islanders like to say. This environment has led to the growth of massive primeval forests of huge, ancient cedar trees creating a permenant land of mists and moss. Even the deer and monkeys are one of a kind, isolated genetically from the mainland. It's splendid, believe me.

So it was with great anticipation that I hauled Andrea out of bed at 5.30 in the morning and set off for the ferry, an anticipation only slightly marred by sleep-deprivation, a hangover and an extremely heavy backpack rubbing against extremely sunburnt shoulders. And indeed, when I arrived in Yakushima at lunchtime, the mountains were looking suitably shrouded in rain-clouds against the backdrop of the little port.

Sadly, my good mood was not to last. Now I don't want to make this a rant against the old LP, but whomever researched the Yakushima section did not do it thoroughly, or at least, did not write about it thoroughly. Instead, in the interests of someone who might be reading this and planning a trip to the island, I simply aim to inform. There is one road that traverses the circumference of the island, and two or three roads that wind short distances into the interior. Public transport exists in the form of a single bus every one to two hours, which is achingly slow and prohibitively expensive. There is usually one bus each day to the major attractions. There are two ""towns"" (double speechmarks for double emphasis on the unsuitability of the word here) and a couple of hamlets. The towns are tiny, and do not expect any of the Lawsons or FamilyMarts or MiniMarts or other wonderful convenience stores that make lunch in Japan so cheap and easy. The convenience stores that are marked on the maps have mostly empty shelves and often will sell some onions and some raw fish in the way of fresh food. I have mostly eaten Ritz crackers for lunch (and breakfast!) whilst I've been here. It's like going to the most remote and smallest Orkney Island in existance without a car. Except no-one speaks English. (Actually, having said that, I'm not convinced that the inhabitants of the Orkneys have sufficiently managed English yet either...)

Now, none of this is to say that you should not go to Yakushima, or that the island isn't lovely and I haven't completely enjoyed my time here. People should just be prepared. I hope it will also help you to understand that after it took my FIVE HOURS and about 9 pounds by bus to get from the port to my youth hostel, which when I arrived turned out to be 7km away from the nearest shop, I was not in the best of moods (did I mention the sunburn already?) Also, it was my first experience of Japanese HI youth hostels. Now all the hostels I have been staying in so far have been Japanese, but based on the Western model, and they've been fantastic - big kitchen, often a bar or a rooftop terrace, free internet, free tea and coffee... one place even had free saki! This was an official Japanese youth hostel, and the difference was remarkable. You have to pay for air conditioning (in sub-tropical conditions!), pay to put something in the fridge, pay for the internet, only have showers at specified times of the day, no alcohol allowed on site, and many other rules too numerous to count. Extremely disgruntled, and frankly quite tired, I think I was in bed by 9pm, having had no food since about 10 that morning.

However, as Jane so wisely put it:

"sometimes those disappointing places give you a trip highlight.
and sometimes not.... in which case, drink sake."

And admittedly, once you have your bus timetable (the most important document you will own on this island), and some tourist info literature, I've found that I've had a pretty damn good few days after all. On Tuesday (08.09.09) I got up early and headed to Yaku-sugi Land, a network of hiking trails based around a number of massive and ancient cedars high up into the mountains. The forests here are unbelievable - primeval in their undisturbed growth, size, and sheer mutiplicity of verdant life bursting out at every turn. The continual dampness and high altitude results in everything - rocks, trees, roots... EVERYTHING being covered in a staggeringly green coating of moss. It looks like a bright green version of Fangorn. It's exactly what I had hoped for, and I've had a great couple of days hiking. Yesterday, as I said, I started at Yaku-sugi Land, but the overestimation of the leaflet in terms of how long it takes you to hike these trails (I think they are possibly calculated with 80 year olds with zimmerframes in mind), meant that at about 11 o clock I decided to branch off the main trails and climb Mount Tachu-dake. This, contrarily, (how do they come up with these time frames?) was a more ambitious undertaking than the leaflet had suggested, and very ambitious for the amount of time I had (the last, and indeed, only, bus back down the mountain was at, wait for it.... 3pm, having dropped you there at 10am), so it was mainly a sprint up the mountain in the heat of the day, a gasping 1min 30 secs break at the top, and then a sprint back down in order not to miss the bus, the consequences of which would be so disasterous that I cannot even consider them. I reached the bus stop wheezing like an asthmatic and with legs that trembled like a jellyfish. Still, good exercise for the day! Not being able to face returning to my deserted hostel so soon, I caught the bus back down the mountain to Anbo, Yakushima's second city (read: smaller than my home village of Backwell), and hung out there for a few hours, wandering around the tiny harbour and river banks and chilling out in a cafe. Admittedly however, I feel much can be gleaned about Anbo from the fact that it's tourist information map shows every building in the place and has labels for 'Arishima office' and 'Genki family home'. Attractions indeed.

Saving grace came that night from a little restaurant that I discovered, amazingly, just down the road from the hostel. Full of Japanese locals, the proprietor was really excited to have a gaigin (foreigner) in the place, and proceeded to offer me various complimentary little dishes that he had prepared in addition to what I had offered, and involve me in much horsing around (albeit mostly in sign-language!) With one particularly effusive Japanese chap at the bar, who spoke very little English at all, but was delighted beyond compare with my journal, the proprietor would turn to me after every joyous and unintelligable outpouring and stage-whisper "He's Chinese". Hilarious, and simultaneously interesting as a choice of nationality. The Japanese are well-known for their casual incipiant racism - not a malicious racism, but a racism nonetheless - especially towards those of Korean and Chinese descent. Will Ferguson relates an ancedote whereby a Chinese man is elected to some kind of state official or council seat and the Japanese make a massive deal out of the issue - the papers celebrating the cultural diversity of their politics, and the tolerance of the country. The candidate himself is interviewed, and states that he is honoured to be elected and seeks to become an example for all non-Japanese people in the country. Then you read a little further and realise that the man was born in Japan. Not only that, but his PARENTS were born in Japan. It is his grandparents who were originally Chinese. An amusing story, but an indicative one. I have not yet seen much evidence of this attitude myself - how can I, with such a superficial insight into Japan as one can get in 5 weeks?.... but it would be interesting to live here on a more permenant basis and find out if the stereotypes are true.

The following day I set out on yet another 2 and a half hour bus trip round the island to another accessable hiking area, Sharitani. This was based more on the primeval forests than the cedars, although I did see one example that was apparently 3000 years old, a figure so boggling that I had trouble imagining it. That's a millenium BEFORE the birth of Christ - the date at which humans first started using iron tools, and when the Assyrians started their conquest of neighbouring regions. As I said, mind-boggling. The hiking trails here were a bit more expansive, and I found myself completely on my own for long periods of time just stumbling over tree roots and fording streams. Contrary to the statistics, I had beautiful sunshine for the entire time that I was there, and I spent an hour or so just chilling out on the edge of the waterfall, feet dangling in the clear water, and enjoying the sunshine. Another evening in the hostel communal bath (yummy) and in the restaurant, and that was basically my time in Yakushima up. On Thursday I checked out in the morning, and then, having finally reached the port in the usual manner, went to the visitors centre/museum before catching my ferry back to the mainland at 1.30pm. Despite the fact that I had spent 2 full days and two half-days on Yakushima, it felt like I had seen very little. In particular, I hadn't done the famous Jomon-sugi trek.

Jomon-sugi is the oldest (known) cedar in the world, estimated to be between 5000 and 6000 years old. It is hidden deep in the forests three-quarters of the way up the tallest mountain in Yakushima (and southern Japan), and involves a 10 hour minimum trek from Anbo, about 2 hours by bus from where I was staying. It had been one of the original reasons I had wanted to come to Yakushima. And, well, I guess I wimped out on it. Theoretically you can do it in one day, but because of the conditions you have to take camping facilities and emergency supplies and all that kind of jazz in case you are stuck up there. So its a lot of hassle, especially when you are stuck far from the shops. Plus, having climbed Fuji just over a week before, I didn't feel quite ready for another quite so ambitious expedition. Having seen the images in the (amazing) film put on at the visitors cultural centre thing however, I regretted it. It looks beautiful up there. I'd like to come back to Yakushima one day and spend some more time here, but if I did, I would do it differently. I'd stay in a hostel in Miyanora, the main port (apparently there is a youth hostel there, why the LP didn't chose to mention that one instead is a mystery...) I'd make sure I had an international driving licence so I could rent a car, and I'd give myself more time here. The main problem with the buses and the schedule is that you can basically only do one thing each day. There is supposed to be beautiful beaches on the other side of the island where sea turtles nest in season, there are also seaside hot springs where you can bathe in rockpools that are the temperature of a jacuzzi. All of these things were basically closed off to me without a car. Yakushima is an amazing destination, just maybe not for a backpacker.

Random Japanese observation of the week: Employment
One of the first things anyone notices about Japan is the amount of superfluous service employees there are about. There is the girl who's job it is to stand all day in the elevator welcoming you in and out and pushing the buttons for you. (Along with miner this is perhaps the worst job for me ever!) There are the 3 guys who are employed to stand outside car parks and tell cars when it is safe to pull onto the road. It is the countless countless multitudes of sale assistants in convenience stores that stand around in case you have an enquiry, and all turn to you with a deafening, robotic and frankly quite creepy "irrashimassseee" ("welcome") when you enter the shop. The reason for this is Japan's government employment policy, which favours pointless employment over unemployment. It's true that unemployment figures are extremely low in the country, and that this presumably saves a lot of money on benefits and so on, but one has to wonder how happy people are to do such an unfulfilling job.
The reason this has come up this week is the lovely Japanese couple I kept bumping into everywhere I went on Yakushima (when there is only one bus and a limitied number of accessable attractions, you tend to be amongst the same crowd a lot). The girl spoke amazing English and was going to England for a couple of months next year to improve further. Her boyfriend (or husband)'s hobby was running - he explained that he had run, yes, that's right, RUN, up Mt Fuji FOUR TIMES in the past year. (I guess according to my earlier blog that this would make him a "f**king psychopath", but if he was then he was a very sweet one). They had travelled all over the world together and were clearly highly intelligent, accomplished, people.

Their occupation? Sales assistants. Now there is nothing wrong with being a sales assistant. But it would seem to me that a proportion of the Japanese workforce are quite severely over-qualified for their jobs....

Stayed: Yakushima Youth Hostel, Onoaida. Has internet access and a communal bath, but really is in the middle of nowhere, and the price isn't low enough to make up for it. Unless you enjoy a four hour commute by bus every day, I'd recommend checking out the Miyanora Port Youth Hostel instead.

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Part of trip: Japan and Vietnam

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