Yakushima is best known for its majestic ancient cedar trees and the lush forests where they grow, but they're not all the island has to offer. Shitogo Gajumaru Banyan Garden may be on a much smaller scale - you can be in and out in twenty minutes if you choose not to linger - but it's a fun place to see a whole little forest of one of nature's more unusual trees, especially if you have kids.
I paid my ¥200 and walked through the entrance, and it was as if I'd stepped into a menacing enchanted forest from a fantasy novel. Banyans live and spread by dropping roots down from limbs, which eventually connect with the ground, then thicken into prop roots which support the tree. They also sprout on existing trees, which can end up being choked by the banyans' enmeshing roots, this habit earning banyans the cheery name 'Strangler fig'. These processes were happening all around: there are scores of trees, with twisted tangles of roots gripping the trunks, like Medusa on a bad hair day.
Sometimes it's difficult to tell which are the original trees and which are the supporting prop roots, so thick have they become, and you'll find yourself walking through arches as well as underneath trees. The thick treetops also form a canopy which blocks out the light, and along with the new, thin hair-like roots hanging down over the paths, it really did feel like a fantasy 'Witches Wood'; if I'd had small children with me I'd have feared for their safety, lest they be snatched up into the treetops. In fact, it's fun to imagine stories that explain how the trees took on their twisted forms: this tree twisted itself into knots trying to catch some kids running in circles around it, that one nearly fell as it reached out for an unattended child, those two became tangled up together as they squabbled over a particularly plump, tasty-looking little boy.
If you don't have your own transportation, the garden is less than five minutes' walk from Shitoko bus stop, about a ten-minute ride from Miyanoura Port, though the buses are fairly infrequent. It might not detain you for long, but if you have an hour or two to spare then the Gajumaru Banyan Garden is an enjoyable diversion.
