Yakushima

Yakushima is known to be wet, picking up moisture from the East China Sea, so it was no surprise that today was cloudy with early morning rain which fortunately abated whilst we were hiking.
We took two local buses, rising up through the forest to the Shiratani Unsuikyo Ravine in the Yakushima National Recreation Forest. We hiked 5.6km over four hours, rising from 600m to 1000m over sometimes rough ground. The Forest which could be described as a Cloud or Temperate Rain Forest, is famous for its ancient cedar trees but we also saw many broadleaf trees plus streams leading to waterfalls. We were fortunate to see a troop of monkeys near the summit, close to where we ate our bento-box lunches.
The ravine was the inspiration for the animated film, Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke).
On a wet evening (we were unused to rain on the trip), we had dinner at a restaurant across the river where we tried lots of dishes including mackerel, which should have been fresh being beside the sea, frozen mandarins with honey, and frozen passionfruit.En savoir plus