杉

So it’s been a while bloggy. Whatcha been up to?

There are things I need to write about (in no particular order...)

Beloved folks leaving Nippon
Getting my Japanese Driver's License
Taiko
Kagura
CHESS
my 3-4 class

These are all important to me and have effected me or made me laugh or cry, and I will get to each in turn. The void that was left in Hamada weighs especially heavy on my mind.
But for today I will write about a small circular island south of Kyushu.

Forget all my gushing, gaudy words and descriptions. Pretend I've never said that something really moved me or made me wish I was a professional traveler.

A summer vacation passed by this blog and there’s so much to say that I’d rather skip summer and head into the new term (now mid-term) at school.

But what a damn good summer…

While David was here he was welcomed to a bunch of Japanese families’ homes and wined and dined with earnest. Gotsu High School students and faculty were curious but warm, with the occasional inappropriate comments from teenage boys. Within the first week of his visit David understood why I re―contracted.

We traveled around a lot, went to Kyoto during the Gion Matsuri, fed monkeys, perused temples and zen rock gardens, got soaked to the bone by rain, and were witness to the busiest of Kyoto’s city streets being shut down and opened to thousands of pedestrians drinking as they walked. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’m not going to talk at length about our trip to Kyoto, or our little trips around Shimane, or Tokyo or Hiroshima. The place that blew our minds the most was Yakushima.

At the Southern most point of the island of Kyushu, there lies Kagoshima. Kagoshima is known as Japan’s Naples, its harbors look out onto a dormant volcanic island. It looks like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean, an island existing merely as the base of an enormous volcano, thrusting its way into the sky.Its presence is formidable to say the least.

After a long shinkansen trip (with only 4 transfers) to Kagoshima, we found our hotel and made our way to the shore, to some beautiful grounds of the home of an old dignitary. We meandered our way back to our hotel on foot, passing little shops and residences that lined the harbor, we kept saying, ‘this reminds me of some other place in Europe…’

The next morning we rose early to catch a four hour ferry to Yakushima, the ferry played the Japanese version of Sherlock Holmes the entire way there so my seasickness was waylaid by distraction. It was a hazy day so visibility was scarce, and our destination slowly materialized in front of the boat like a mirage.

Yakushima is a circular island with a circumference of 135km. Within its tiny borders it has two of the highest peaks in Kyushu, so as you can imagine, its silhouette rising closer and closer to the ferry was stunning.

From one of David's emails home: "In recounting our stay on the island, I won't linger on the financial concerns weighing on me during the trip, or shooing gnats and mosquitoes from my ears on the trail, or the Enya forever looped on the stereo in the guesthouse common area. I won't bore you with splotchy sunburn, the singeing black pleather interior of the rental car, hiking with a hangover, the constant sweating, burning my feet on hot sand, pebbles is my boots, trails so knotted with roots one can't help but take a few spills, walking through spider webs, exhaustion, deep muscle pain, or Ashley nearly vomiting in her
mouth while trying to choke down a flying fish head. Instead, I want to emphasize the joy in spending what money I had, seeing monkeys groom each
other in the road, and using an old-fashioned coffee grinder to grind my own beans in the morning. I'll mention the incredible meals our hosts prepared each night, the warmth of the other guests, the empty and pristine beach along the island's western coast, tree trunks bigger than cars, boulders draped in moss, a huge blueand black butterfly drinking from wild pink azaleas, river water so clean you can literally bend down and drink it, waterfalls, very large ferns, and biting the head off a flying fish fried whole with its fins outspread like wings."

With David's permission, I'd like to share his remarks about one of our final days in Yakushima. Sure, one could say I'm being lazy, but I think he captures what it was like to be there:
"Day 3.

Friday I woke hungover from too much beer and mitake with a migraine hiding behind my left eye from all the sun the day before. But Ashley was feeling good, and rather than pout about my sorry state on our last full day, I sucked it up, properly hydrated myself, took a pain killer, and we set out. Our destination: Jianokuchi-daki, a waterfall about 5km from the guesthouse with an excellent swimming hole at the base, another Chinryu recommendation. The first half of the hike was relatively level under a canopy of enormous palm leaves glowing underneath from the sun above. Eventually we climbed past the palms through clearings thick with prehistoric ferns into the old growth the island is famous for, and even crossed paths with a couple of yakusugi. There were three monkey encounters on this trail, but, alas, Ashley scared them off before I got to the scene.

The trail became difficult, steep, and perilous at times. I whisked the sweat from my head with a towel. Ropes tied to roots and trunks were necessary, forcing me to earn the reward of a cool dip at the end of the hike. And what a reward it was. Jianokuchi waterfall was a minor paradise. A rush of adrenaline cured my headache and hangover when we came out of the forest onto the rocks bordering the lagoon. From the moment we set foot on the trail outside Onoadia Onsen to the time we returned, we saw no one, not a soul on that trail but the yakuzaru. When we arrived at the falls – wild azalea bushes sprouting up between boulders, dragonflies and butterflies hovering and fluttering, the forest crowding the granite cliffs above us – we stripped and jumped into the deep, cold pool. We swam out to the falls to let the water massage us, and it trickled into our eyes. The pool was deep enough that you couldn't spot the bottom, and from certain rocks it was possible to dive. We ate and napped. I couldn't get over the weathered and unruly azaleas. At times, the cicadas were so loud they could be heard over the falls and the river draining the swimming hole. The two hours we spent there were perhaps the best of our visit.

The hike back was bittersweet. Though we were beat and hungry for another of Maya's meals, it would be the last time we saw the forest and the lagoon we'd grown so attached to in a short time. I lingered at every bend in the trail hoping to frame a photo that would accurately capture the primeval scenery: so many vines, so much moss. Once, a scary-looking hornet mistook the cusp of my shirtsleeve and bicep for a blossom and tried to pollinate my armpit. When we descended into the palm forest, we passed a cicada caught in a spider web that would feed the web's owner for days to come. We dodged a mound of monkey shit left on the path.

Chinryu asked about our day and was quite impressed that no one else hiked to the falls that afternoon. He said we were very lucky, that it was like having a "private room."

Saturday Maya drove us back to the ferry terminal in Miyanoura where we spent the last of our cash on omiyage. As Ashley and Maya conversed in Japanese in the front seat, I looked out on the sea, taking note of the ongoing development scarring the island's eastern shore. Back-hoes and bulldozers dotted a leveled dirt field every few hundred meters; clearing space for a resort maybe, or a shopping center. It was a comfort to think that just a few kilometers inland the mountains rose too steeply for development. The forest can't be penetrated fully by man except maybe by his own legs and even that is questionable. I reveled in what I saw as the remoteness and wildness of the island for three days, and I am thankful for having had the chance. Despite the orange and blue machines that dampened the view from Yakushima's one main road, I knew others would feel the same reverence as I did. It's was as magical a place as I had hoped it would be.

The ferry offered the first air-conditioning we'd felt since arriving. That was about the only thing I enjoyed about leaving."