Holidays

Spent last week on a small island called Yakushima about a thousand kilometres or so from Tokyo.

You think of Japan as being a pretty small place but that's just something the locals rote learn at school to repeat to the tourists. It's actually an archipeligo that stretches a few thousand kilometres in length. So it took a few flights and a couple of hours to get down there.

Surprisingly Japan has the highest proportion of forests as a percentage of land area out of all the developed countries. And in JapanYakushima is famed for its forests which reputedly contain trees over seven thousand years old. It also gets a ridiculous ten metres of rainfall a year. Here's a shot of she who must be obeyed crossing a rope bridge through an old forest in the rain....sucking in the nature.

The same cannot be said of Japan's beaches. I've seen figures stating that 80% of Japan's coast line is concreted. They have a fetish of fantastic proportions for the stuff. Every time we jumped in the car we saw concrete mixers racing off to fix nature, repair broken beaches, and crooked coastlines.

The old girl and Lani breathe easy in this shot cause the coastline behind them which had fallen into a state of complete disrepair had been repaired.



We found a lovely little set of hot pools on the coast. This old homeless looking guy with fungus all over his toe nails comes down as I'm getting in and tells me to take my kit off before I get in.


He then, to my complete exasperation, drops his gear and bends over easing himself into the pool and in the process reveals to all a pair of much too low ruby red dog's balls swaying in the gentle noreaster. He plonks 'imself down dog's balls, arse and all. And to top it all off he goes on to give me a lesson on personal hygiene...showing me how to clean myself. Anyway the following day we went there again but as you can see a typhoon swell was affecting the pools somewhat. At least it cleaned out the bits and pieces from his fungus and dog balls.





The hotel we stayed in was lovely...this was the view from the window...better than dog's balls in a noreaster anyway you look at it. It was a really nice hotel.