Yakushima

One of the Ōsumi Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture, 504.88 square kilometres with 11,858 residents, reached by hydrofoil, car ferry or air. Forty-two per cent of it lies inside Yakushima National Park, and in 1980 an area of 18,958 hectares was designated a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve. Ten hectares of wetland at Nagata-hama became a Ramsar site in 1993, and the island is the largest nesting ground for the endangered loggerhead sea turtle in the North Pacific. More than 99 per cent of its electricity is hydroelectric, and the surplus has been used to make hydrogen in a Kagoshima University experiment.