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Trip to Yakushima
If you have seen the masterpiece
from Miyazaki-san called "Princess
Mononoke" (Mononoke hime in Japanese), you may have been charmed by the
wonderful nature described in the movie.
For the last 3 days, I was in Yakushima, an island in Kyushu also Unesco World
Heritage (the first one in Japan), almost entirely covered with the mountains
and the forest that inspired Miyazaki-san and to which the movie gives justice
so well.
The trip was fun, flying from Haneda (instead of the boring Narita) to
Kagushima to take a propeller plane until Yakushima.
I have to admit that it had been a while since the last time I took such a
plane and I was a little worried (I have a certain phobia of propellers,
always fearing the moment when it becomes loose and hits someone...),
especially since I was the seat at row 3, just next to the propeller, enjoying
the vibrations in my back for the whole flight.
Of course, everything went fine after all and using a small rented car (absolutely required in Yakushima, since buses don't run very often especially the ones taking you to the forest), I started my 2 day-trip with a nice trecking course in Shiratani Unsuikyo then went on with Yakusugi Land.
When you enter the
forest, you immediately feel the atmosphere of this wonderful nature and you
can totally picture people some centuries ago worshiping some of the cedar
trees (yakusugi) there, as they are quite amazingly huge: some of the trees
there are about 3,000 years old and reminded me about the way the trees are
drawn in the pictures of the old Chinese tales.
The trees just seem to be immortal: regeneration on stump is a process in which growing moss on a stump hosts dispersed seeds of cedar and those seeds germinate on the stumps then eventually trees mature on them.
Of course, I had taken my camera, as well as my tripod without which not a
lot of pictures could have made it.
It is however a difficult exercise to take pictures of a forest, when you're
balanced between the will to use a wide-angle lens to capture the whole
scenary and using a shallow depth of field to isolate the right element in the
picture (both are not theoretically incompatible, but by experience, it's
difficult to combine both in a nice manner).
Also, you should be careful not to overexpose the picture, because of the high
contrast between the shade of the forest and the brightness of the sky, nor
should you underexpose it, otherwise you'll lose plenty of details of the
trees.
As a matter of fact, I have to say I am not completely satisfied with the
pictures I took but I hope to improve for the next time.
Anyway, please have a look at my Yakushima gallery, the
memories of this trip will remain for long in my mind.
I just wish I could share the magic of this forest a better way than with the
pictures I took there.