Just 40 minutes outside the elegance of Paris, there’s a place where dragons sleep under castles, pirates sail through glowing caves, and you might just bump into a mouse wearing red shorts and yellow shoes. No, this isn’t a hallucination brought on by too much fromage—this is Disneyland Paris, and it’s every bit as magical as it sounds.

Imagine walking through an ancient forest so untouched by time that even the soil seems to rise and fall beneath your feet—as if the Earth itself were breathing. Welcome to Shirakami-Sanchi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northern Japan, home to one of the last remaining virgin beech forests in East Asia... and possibly the most subtly mystical landscape in the entire country.