If you live in urban Japan, probably the only sky you see is sliced up by powerlines; trees grow in tiny parks hemmed in by concrete buildings and polluted expressways. Whatever happened to Japan's traditional love of nature?
You'll find some of it on the small isle of Yakushima, where Japan practically jumps out of ancient history, back when people on this archipelago called their home a "land of the gods."
Though Yakushima is just far-flung enough to make it off the beaten path, its unique ecology is internationally renowned. In 1993, UNESCO selected about a quarter of the island as the first natural World Heritage site in Japan. (Today, there is one other, the Shirakami beech forest in northern Honshu.)