Arrival in Kagoshima. From the shores you can see Sakurajima, an active volcano that is fuming when you arrive. It looks peaceful for the moment but it transmits a foreboding sense of the power of nature. You are spirited away to Yakushima on a hydrofoil.
Yakushima is covered in pristine forests. Some of the trees are thousands of years old. It is a place of magic. Troops of macaques come in and out of the picture, as they are free to roam. You take a trail that calls for your attention, and with every bend you sense you are about to meet some mythical princess just around the corner.
You fly to Osaka and after a day of riveting sightseeing, you head to the peninsula. The trails of the Kumano Kodo are sacred site and pilgrim route at the same time. In the forests and shrines that surround that trails, there is a strong Shinto presence. Here is where the spirits of the dead came to dwell after their passing. It is beautiful, but charged with a certain power you cannot explain with words.
After your pilgrimage in the Kumano Kodo, you spent the night in a tradition ryokan. All sense of the mundane is temporarily suspended, and even if you drive a car to Mount Koya, the spiritual tension that has been building up in the last days is ever present. As you begin your ascent and pass shrine after shrine, temple after temple, you wonder at the blend of Buddhism and Shintoism that prevails. You meditate in the sacred places and rejoice in the beautiful nature that surrounds you. You have seen three faces of the spirit of Japan.
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