Gakuranman.com – illuminating Japan

Here’s a video-photo slideshow of my trip to Yakushima (屋久島), the green island in southern Japan, famed for its ancient cedar trees (yakusugi) and captivating forests. I went there for a 3-day trip with a couple of Japanese friends late summer 2008.

Finally, at long last! I made it to the green island of Yakushima, tucked snugly away below Kyushu in the South of Japan. It’s a chunk of land covered mostly in sugi (cedar) trees, and awesomely huge ones at that, with sage-old weathered limbs gnarled and warped bearing thickets of leaves, all the way up [...]

大山 – Literally: ‘big mountain’. It was the Sunday following the Jack Johnson concert that Kyunai Ayaka-san’s enthusiasm for hiking took us up to the summit of Mt. Daisen (height 1729m) – an extinct volcano located in Tottori Prefecture.