The Yak

Yakushima is a pentagon shaped island a couple of hundred kilometres off the coast of Kyushu, the southern most of the four major islands of Japan. It’s home to some of the most pristine forest still left in Japan, is said to be the inspiration for that one animation about the trees and the arrows and the creepy little things, and is also where Jomon-Sugi lives. Jomon-Sugi, you ask. What, pray tell, is this?

Jomon-Sugi is a cryptomeria conifer and is the largest known of its kind, and one of the oldest living trees in the world, at somewhere between 2500 and 7500 years old. It’s massive. So massive, in fact, that when you hike for six hours up the moutains of Yakushima to reach it, the first thing that pops into you mind upon finally sighting it is, “Wow, that’s a really enormous tree” which is quickly followed by, “Wow, I bet photos of this will be entirely unimpressive.” It is large and photos of it are, on the whole, wholly mediocre. Much more fun are victory poses, deer eating their own faces or sticks in the sand. More photos in the set on flickr.

Posted in Travel on Thursday April 27, 2006.