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

Akita International University (AIU) is small, rural place, hidden away in the Tohoku region in Northern Japan. With a mere 600 or so students and only a few bus journeys a day to the main city, it has a certain feeling of isolation, but nurtures an atmosphere similar to one you might find at home.

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.