Episode One

Wildlife expert Nick Baker embarks on an adventure through Japan's wilderness to experience the deep respect the Japanese have for the natural world and to see what makes Japan's landscape so unique. Nick's journey was partly inspired by his friends, naturalist Steve Backshall and Olympic gold-medallist and rower Helen Glover, whose winter visit took them through six of Japan's remote northern provinces. In this first episode, Steve and Helen explore the extraordinary mud volcanoes of Akita province. Nick witnesses one of Japan's greatest annual wildlife spectacles, as one hundred thousand greater white-fronted geese gather on the Izunuma-Uchinuma lakes in Miyagi province. And as Japan marks the tenth anniversary of the 2011 tsunami, Nick travels to the coastal city of Minamisoma where he hears a powerful story of recovery from one of the survivors who has been selected to be a torch bearer for the Tokyo Olympic Games. Nick then travels on to Nagai and in the mountains of Yamagata he learns about the ancient Japanese art of sake brewing and the story of a business that's rebuilt itself over the last ten years.