Akihiro Wada

From Hakone to Yakushima, then home again

I was born and raised near Hakone, among the hills behind Odawara. My career as a guide began somewhere else: Yakushima, the World Heritage island south of Kyushu.

I lived and worked there for more than thirteen years as a hiking and field guide. Yakushima taught me how to read weather, terrain and the needs of the person walking beside me. It also deepened something that had always been true: I feel most at home among trees.

In 2022, I returned to my hometown and started Coconuts Hike Japan, guiding visitors through the landscapes and old paths where I grew up.

The temple that changed our direction

Near my childhood home is a beautiful temple surrounded by cedars more than six hundred years old. Even my kindergarten was built by the temple. My wife, Carmen, suggested creating a tour there because simply walking through the grounds felt so soothing.

While we were naming the experience, Carmen remembered the phrase forest bathing. At first, it was only a feeling to us. We called the tour “Forest Bathing in Hakone Geopark and Onsen,” and guests loved it.

We gradually understood that shinrin-yoku is more than walking through a forest. In 2024, I completed formal training and became a certified forest bathing facilitator. We began finding locations specifically for stillness, sensory attention and rest. Breathe Hakone grew from that journey — a separate home for the quieter side of our work.

Read the full story of how Breathe Hakone began →

How I guide

We walk slowly. I will ask you to stop more often than feels reasonable, and at some point I will ask you to lie down on the forest floor and look up — which is the part almost everyone resists, and the part almost everyone later says was the point.

I do not lecture. I will tell you what a tree is, or why the air smells like that, if you want to know. But mostly I get out of the way and let the forest do the work. It is better at this than I am.

Credentials

• ✓Certified shinrin-yoku facilitator — formally trained in forest therapy practice.
• ✓Government-certified national guide (全国通訳案内士) with over 13 years of professional mountain guiding.
• ✓Wilderness First Aid certified. We walk in remote terrain; this matters.
• ✓Deep local knowledge. Since returning home in 2022, I have continued exploring Hakone’s paths and forests in every season.
• ✓Aki guides in English and French; Carmen can guide in Mandarin and Cantonese.

— Aki