BENTLEY MAGAZINE
Touch wood
A road trip from Tokyo’s urban jungle to the sacred forests that surround it, exploring the benefits of shinrin-yoku in a Flying Spur.
“The first thing to do is close your eyes” I’m in a forest. In Japan. In the rain. My guide is Nagisa Ono, Executive Director of the Future with Forest Association. She is giving me an introduction to shinrin-yoku – the Japanese practice of forest bathing – in Naganuma Park just east of Tokyo.
In its most basic form forest bathing means being immersed in nature. It’s as simple as a walk in the woods. The idea emerged in Japan in the 1980s both as an antidote to the chronic stresses of modern life and a way for people to reconnect with and protect the forests of Japan. Around 90% of Japanese people now live in an urban environment and Tokyo is the most densely populated metropolis on earth with more than 37 million residents.
“So much of our mental processing capacity is taken up by sight but when we close our eyes the other senses are enhanced.” Nagisa explains. My senses mostly feel wet at this point but I take a deep breath and do as she asks. We stand quietly for a few moments and Nagisa is right, it’s like the volume gently dials up all around us. The rhythmic pitpattering rain intensifies although the leafy canopy shelters us from the worst of it. Nightingales trill their intricate melodies while the crows brag back and forth. The air thickens with coppery earth scents and cedar musk.
Research into the effects of shinrin-yoku on mental health and wellbeing began in earnest in the 1990s and the science now reflects what many of us instinctively know already. Studies show that time spent in nature lowers cortisol, adrenalin and blood pressure. Stress dramatically inhibits our ability to fight disease and evidence suggests that forest environments can reduce parasympathetic activity and increase the production of natural killer cells which are crucial to the immune system. Or as Nagisa puts it “Changing what’s outside you changes what’s inside you.”
When I open my eyes again my sight seems sharper, I find myself noticing more detail, fine spider webs draped over boughs and a portly brown frog inspecting us from the undergrowth. Nagisa hooks a branch with her umbrella and pulls it down to pick plump mulberries. She adds lemon myrtle to her water bottle and picks sansho leaves from a prickly ash – commonly used in Japanese cooking sansho is a citrusy spice that tingles on the tongue. At the most profound level humans were shaped by nature over millennia as it sheltered and nourished us. Forest bathing expert Professor Miyazaki Yoshifumi has written of the practice “It is clear that our bodies still recognise nature as our home.”
We climb slowly, deeper into the forest, mindful of the exposed sinewy roots of grand sawtooth oaks. Nagisa talks with obvious pleasure about the wonder of the tree community, how they communicate and share resources through their underground network. Somewhere near the summit we reach the Tori-yama Café where revered founder of Ghibli Studio Hayao Miyazaki is said to have found inspiration for animé classic Spirited Away.
Inside, the owner’s family are sitting on low cushions around the irori, a traditional sunken hearth, smoking platters of tofu and meat and chatting amicably. We sip green tea in a dream and nibble red bean paste-filled wafers before descending back into the modern world.
Sliding behind the wheel of Flying Spur the drive back into Tokyo preserves the feeling of serenity. I glide high above the city, rollercoasting past skyscrapers and roofs, swooping through labyrinthine expressways and seemingly infinite loops. Wellness it seems is not just about relaxation. I find driving simultaneously stimulating and soothing, I often have my best ideas on the road. A study from Columbia University has found that driving can boost cognitive function. Apparently people who drive for pleasure release higher amounts of dehydroepiandrosterone, an important hormone to keep the brain active.
Soon I’m back down to earth with the snub-nosed Kei cars and characterful taxis navigating Ginza, one of Tokyo’s most opulent shopping districts. Despite the clamour, traffic here is orderly and car horns are conspicuously absent.
I park up to explore the streets for a while, a million stimuli warring for my attention. Tinny J-pop boy bands clash from bicycle speakers. A flurry of cool girls in pastel plaits and vertiginous platform shoes sweep past. Giant-eyed animé characters and pulsing neon displays flash in my periphery. Cacophonous trains screech overhead and glitchy sirens whoop and whine. Noise pollution in parts of Tokyo can reach up to 100 decibels, nearly double the WHO recommendation of 53. The city is exhilarating but after a few hours I’m frazzled and longing for the respite of nature.
On my way to one of Tokyo’s oldest parks I apologise my way through Tsukiji Fish Market which is aptly packed like tinned sardines. The weekend throng shuffle through narrow alleys picking at iced trays of scales and crustaceans. It is with some relief I reach the haven of Hamarikyu Gardens.
In stark contrast to the mirrored Shiodome high rises that loom above it these Edo period gardens radiate beauty and calm. Built as a hunting ground for Shogun Tokugawa in the 17th century the clover-freckled gardens are home to a noble black pine tree that is over 300 years-old. Breathing in the peonies and brackish tidal ponds I start to feel grounded again.
In the following days I explore widely, driving the melancholy singing roads of Gunma where grooves in the tarmac play oddly affecting laments. Melody roads as they are known can be found all over Japan as a way to encourage drivers to obey the speed limit – the road songs, like records, are best played at the correct revs.
I luxuriate in one of the Gunma’s abundant natural geothermal springs. The private onsen overlooks a wall of trees so this time I am literally bathing in a forest. The water is surprisingly hot and soporific but offset by a cool sylvan breeze. Onsen are a longstanding health tradition in Japan, it was once said they can heal “40,000 kinds of illness.” I’m not sure about that but at the very least it rinses away the sensory overload of the city.
I wander the soaring Four Seasons Bamboo Forest at Wakayama Farm in the north and visit the exquisite modern ryokan Kishi-Ke in the coastal south of Kamakura. Built by Nobuyuki Kishi, a descendant of Samurai, Kishi Ke was inspired by Nobuyuki’s time quietly preparing and drinking tea with his grandfather. He and his wife Hitomi are committed to the zen philosophy of chisoku which broadly translates as being satisfied with what you have. But although each experience is richly rewarding nothing remains with me quite as profoundly as that first walk in the forest rain. That is until my last day.
I’ve set the Flying Spur to sport mode on the Hakone Nanamagari. Part of the old Tokaido route 732 this series of epic switchbacks is famously beloved of thrill-seeking drifters but I’m taking the perilous hairpins at my own pace. Stopping for a teabreak I notice some modest stone steps beckoning me down into the Hakone Forest.
At the bottom I find a tranquil little dell. It is somehow sublime and entirely ordinary at the same time. In Shinto it is believed that crossing into the forest is passing into the realm of the divine so there are often norii gates at the entrance. But here I just find a simple wooden bench surrounded by cinder black trunks and everywhere every kind of green. Leaves gossip high above me and the scene is alive with what the Japanese call komorebi, sunlight falling through leaves. I remove my shoes and press my toes into the cool suede moss of the forest floor. I watch a dusty black ant pause on a branch, waving his antennae this way and that. I inhale the spiky pines perfuming the air, feeling my anxieties ebb away. And I close my eyes.
