On the morning of the second day, we trekked through Kinsakubaru Forest. It's a special zone in a UNESCO World Heritage area on Amami-Oshima. You can't step into it without a certified Eco Tour Guide, and bringing in or taking out any fauna and flora is strictly prohibited. In front of the entrance to the trekking route, there are five or six parking spaces. Guides have to reserve parking, so only a limited number of people can enter the forest at a time. Our guide was in his sixties and didn't have an Amami accent. I thought he had most likely moved to Amami because he fell in love with the island.
As soon as we entered the forest, we heard a Ryukyu Robin's song:
However, we couldn't spot it. It was difficult to spot any birds, but we could hear their songs, as well as the drilling sound of the local Ownston's woodpecker.
It's rare for me to take photos even when I'm traveling, which is unfortunate because my photos below don't do justice to the awesome beauty of this forest.
The picture below is one of a few pictures I took —a Matrona japonica. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It had thin black wings and an iridescent blueish-green body.
We also spotted a sword-tailed newt and an Okinawa tree lizard. Among the plants, besides the tree ferns in the header photo, we saw shell ginger and giant elephant ears, which is said to have inspired the umbrella scene in My Neighbor Totoro. They were in bloom and their strange flowers gave off a strange smell. Every time I spotted one, I stopped to smell the strange flowers — until the guide warned me, half-laughing, that I might get bitten by some bug.
The highlight of our trek was spotting a hime-habu (Okinawa pit viper). They aren't as venomous as other pit vipers, but still dangerous, so we carefully walked past it.
The guide taught us a lot of interesting things, but sadly, it's difficult for me to express them in English. Even sadder, I'll probably forget most of them before long. However, what I got from him wasn't only knowledge but also a way of observing nature. I can hear birdsongs and pick out lots of wild plants in my neighborhood. I'm more interested in them than I used to be.
I didn't think about snakes! We have some pretty bad snakes around here, and I think my only big fear is getting bitten by one
Yeah, some snakes are really scary. Habu is the most venomous snake in Japan and bigger than the hime-habu, but not as dangerous as the tiger snake in Australia. Some of the people on Amami-Oshima carry a stick called habu-boh in their cars, and when they spot a habu, they catch it and take it to a public office and get 3,000 yen. Live habu are used to make serum.
So, I think humans are the scariest creatures in the world — needless to say, though.