ESSENTIALS

A seven-night tailormade trip to Hokkaido with Audley Travel (01993 838210; audleytravel.com/ japan) costs from £4,021 per person (based on two sharing). The trip includes economy flights from the UK, time in Daisetsuzan and Lake Akan, accommodation for six nights’ (B&B) forest walking and a day’s hiking excursion and car hire.

Tsuruga Adventure Base (en.tsuruga-adventure.com) in Hokkaido runs an Invitation to the Mystical Forest experience, which costs about £50 (plus tax) for adults.

Wondertrunk (wondertrunk.co) also offers glamping tours in Hokkaido.

For more information about travelling in Hokkaido, see best.visithokkaido.jp/nature

For more on the Maeda Ippoen Forest Reserve, see ippoen.or.jp/about/

The official website for The Legend of Zelda is zelda.com the vents keep growing. From the visitor centre car park, a path wound indulgently through a spruce forest.

The unnecessary turns encouraged me to linger on the path and take in my surroundings, noticing the way the light fell through the trees, or how the moss on the bark only faced in one direction. This sort of attention to detail is typical of Japanese nature experiences, and I love it.

“These trees are alpine,” said Shinobu, a botanist who works at the visitor centre, “You normally find them at altitudes around 1,000m [3,300ft], but we are only 150m [500ft] above sea level here. Yet we have alpine trees. That’s because the sulphur from Mount Iwo gets into the air and soil, making this a hostile environment. Life adapts, creating this unique ecosystem.”

Over the course of about 100 yards, the trees got smaller until they were the size of bushes, then they suddenly stopped, revealing Mt Iwo. The mountain looked like it had been cleaved with a giant axe. Fluorescent yellow fumaroles belched steam