After Fukuoka was time to go to Yakushima, a forest/mountain island to the south of Japan attracting many tourists for its great hiking trails. It took about 90min on a boat from the port of Kagoshima to get there -- that was a pretty fast jet boat, most of the time we were moving at around 80km/h.
While leaving Kagoshima I was lucky enough to witness an eruption of the Sakurajima volcano. These eruptions are fairly common -- multiple times a week -- but it was still very nice to see and the timing was great.
My hotel on the island was great: breakfast and dinner included, a large public bath and sauna, and a nice Japanese-style room. They also provided the option to buy a lunch box for a reasonable price, and since I was leaving early the last day they also offered to provide my breakfast as a box, which was really nice.
My plan was to hike at Shiratani Unsuikyo, a mossy forest that inspired the Princess Mononoke movie. Unfortunately, came morning, a problem came up...
This was a sufficient amount of rain that the hiking trails were closed, since river crossings were too dangerous. So I had to find a fallback plan. Luckily, there was one thing on the island that would be better with rain, so that's where I went: the Oko-no-taki waterfall.
The water flow was crazy with all the rain that came down the island for 12 hours straight. The island itself was also very beautiful after the rain started calming down.
With that, I left the next day early for a crazy itinerary crossing the whole country:
- Bus from my hotel to the western port of Yakushima island (Anbou).
- Boat back to Kagoshima.
- Tram from the port to the train station in Kagoshima.
- Train to Fukuoka.
- Subway from Fukuoka station to the airport.
- Flight from Fukuoka Airport to Shin-Chitose Airport in Hokkaido.
- Train to Sapporo.
More on Sapporo in the next post!