Inside Japan's FOREST OF MONONOKE - [Solo Hike 4K]

[Music] [Music] over 000 meters up in the mountains of nagano japan lies a forest that some describe as feeling enchanted a forest it's so hard to reach that the roads are closed for nearly half a year in the cooler months but for a few short months of the year it's open for those who make the journey [Music] i camped out at a nearby parking lot overnight so i'd be able to start the day nice and early it's about 5 30 right now as it usually is the sun is just barely starting to peek through the trees and other than a few photos that i saw on google maps i don't know what to expect don't know how big it is let's go find out [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] now when you get about five or so minutes in the path splits off like this just a minute ago a photographer went running by me blew right past a beautiful scene with a couple cameras and i figured he must be searching for something really good or know something really good so i chased him up to this point and lost him but realistically with this looking as nice as it does i don't think there's any bad choices there's a little bit of a map right here and this says that off this way is a 360 degree panoramic view but it requires about a 40 minute hike up the mountain it looks like most of the moss is gonna be this way [Music] well i'm pretty sure this place is always beautiful timing is really important with places like this the best way is the most difficult way which is get a night that has heavy rainfall and then sunshine right after it looked like there was a chance of rain last night and then when i got here it was pouring and now now look at it we we got lucky we got lucky [Music] so there's a lake off to my right over here and this section right beside the lake is a campsite i could have come out here just cams here last night it would have been really terrible with the rain to be tent camping on a night like that but i'm gonna pass through this area somewhat quietly because it is still insanely early and i don't want to wake everyone up i really need to watch my step here when i first found this place i stumbled across it on google maps while looking for campsites in the area and at the time it was marked on google maps as mononoke no mori the forest of mononoke now they say that the actual forest of mongoloike the one that is based off of is out in yakushima i've been there i'd almost i'd almost have to say that this is is more beautiful than there again i just i got perfect timing as well but like many i've always been a huge fan of the ghibli universe and just the way that everything is portrayed and shown and so i i knew as soon as i found it that i had to i had to come here now when i say it was first called that it's it's gone through quite the it's gone through quite the experience the process it a few months later that name completely disappeared and it just said forest and all the photos associated with it were gone and then quite recently i'd say in the last maybe week or two this place has come up as its official name and now shows on the map so [Music] and then the path splits again when we get up here back to the parking lot where i spent the night and there's a lake walking path and a mountain hiking path out here we'll head down this way really got to watch your step on these boards there is another parking lot down the road where people were setting up tents and whatnot if you want to camp right beside your car and not bring your stuff out to the campsite here and i just slept in the car for the night and it looks like i chose my paths wisely because this is a photographer who came running by me before [Music] so [Music] do this particular section of the forest is actually labeled as the forest of monoloque and that photographer whose name is hashi and i ended up becoming friends and exploring the forest together for a while [Music] that made my day i had it is so slippery here that i've fallen down like two or three times we didn't have any signals so we just kind of wrote down each other's instagrams after walking something like eight kilometers through the nakasendo trail and not coming across a single other person on the trail i wasn't expecting to meet anybody today but definitely definitely glad that i came across them i have no idea where we're going by the way [Music] [Music] this whole section here the path and the ropes and everything just disappear and you find yourself just walking along rocks that are very slippery [Music] [Applause] so it is nine o'clock in the morning now i have somehow been walking around this area for hours and i guess when i say somehow you you can see you can see how just it feels like it's been 20 or 30 minutes you could easily easily spend an entire day here but looking at the area now with cloud cover and less light breaking through you can see why hashi ran past me this morning to get the shots with the light breaking through but with or without it this is by far gotta be one of my new favorite places in japan [Music] you

Channel: Tokyo Lens

Views: 204,391

Keywords: Japan, Tokyo, Vlog, Tokyo Lens, Tokyo Vlog, Japan Vlog, Norm Nakamura, Norm Tokyo Lens, Japanese, hiking, solo hike, mononoke, japanese forest, mononoke no mori, forest of mononoke, mononoke in real life, hiking japan, japan hike, solo hiking japan, japan solo hike, solo hiking, where to go in japan, what to do in japan, japan hidden spots, japan moss forest, moss forest

Id: sZ4nCiJAw20

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021