Visiting One of Japan’s Most Remote Islands
Yakushima is Japan’s oldest World Natural Heritage Site
Allow me to tell the story of two separate encounters with a magical place on a remote Japanese island.
Reaching it takes a full day of travel. Getting there, in a nutshell — take the bullet train from Tokyo across Japan’s main island, continuing through Kyushu to the final stop at its southernmost point. There, at Kagoshima, board the hydrofoil ferry that heads out to the open sea — first navigating the smooth waters of Kagoshima Bay, then rounding the tip of Satsuma Peninsula, then through the choppy waters of the East China Sea, until finally, at 30°N/130°E, you arrive at the island of Yakushima 屋久島.
Yakushima is the last island of any real size in the area. It measures about 30 kilometers across, so it’s a bit smaller than Kauai, Hawai’i. The interior of its circular shape is mountainous, with Mount Miyanoura, and its handsome granite outcroppings, towering nearly two thousand meters above the ocean’s surface. Only a thin ribbon of flat land exists around Yakushima’s perimeter, where the island’s 12,000 inhabitants reside.
