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Yakushima, Kagoshima
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Some living ancient Yakusugi survived logging because their twisted or irregular trunks made them less desirable as lumber.
Jomon Sugi is estimated to be at least about two thousand years old, with some estimates extending beyond seven thousand years.
Yakushima gets so much rain that an island saying jokes that it rains thirty-five days a month.
Yakushima is famous for flying fish, which can be deep-fried whole and eaten with their crispy wing-like fins.
Visitors can climb from subtropical coastal vegetation toward cool high-mountain vegetation without leaving the island.
Mountain areas of Yakushima can receive close to ten thousand millimeters of precipitation in a year.
Japanese cedars on Yakushima more than one thousand years old receive the special name Yakusugi.
Yakusugi grow unusually slowly in thin, nutrient-poor soils over Yakushima's granite mountains.
Their slow growth creates dense, resin-rich wood that is exceptionally resistant to decay.
An estimated fifty to seventy percent of Yakushima's ancient cedars had been cut by the end of the Edo period.
Yakusugi wood was once valuable enough to be used for paying taxes.
More than five hundred people once lived in the mountain logging settlement of Kosugidani.
Kosugidani was abandoned after logging operations ended in nineteen sixty-seven.
Wilson's Stump is so enormous that visitors can walk inside its hollow interior.
A small spring emerges from inside Wilson's Stump.
From one position inside Wilson's Stump, the opening above forms a famous heart-shaped view of the sky.
Mount Miyanoura rises 1,936 meters, making it the highest mountain in the Kyushu region.
Nearly every traditional Yakushima community maintains its own form of mountain pilgrimage.
During one pilgrimage, participants carry beach sand to a mountain shrine and bring a rhododendron branch back toward the village.
Nagata has a traditional dance whose movements represent a sea turtle coming ashore, laying eggs and returning to the ocean.
Nagata Beach accounts for roughly thirty to forty percent of recorded loggerhead turtle landings in Japan.
Yakushima has distinctive island subspecies of Japanese macaque and sika deer.
Waters around the national park support about one thousand fish species and more than seven hundred mollusk species.
Hirauchi's seaside hot spring can only be used around low tide because the ocean covers it again as the tide rises.
People have bathed at Hirauchi Kaichu Onsen for more than four hundred years.
Flying fish are a Yakushima specialty, sometimes fried whole with their striking wing-like fins.
Yakushima's fresh mackerel is prized locally; ask about seasonal preparations at island restaurants.
Tankan is a fragrant citrus fruit grown on Yakushima and enjoyed fresh or in local sweets.
Yakushima produces sweet-potato shochu, a distilled spirit distinct from brewed sake.
Mitake is a well-known Yakushima shochu associated with the island's local drinking culture.
Yakushima's beaches are important nesting grounds for loggerhead sea turtles.
Yakusugi crafts may use naturally fallen or previously cut cedar rather than newly felled ancient trees.
Traditional mountain pilgrimages connect Yakushima's coastal settlements with sacred high peaks.
