Japan has never been busier, but I saw sights that few travellers experience

The narrow streets of Yoshida village are empty but not quite deserted.

Four men in smart business suits are standing on a bridge spellbound by the spectacle of five giant salamanders nudging like lumpen boulders in slow motion upstream.

"This is very rare," whispers Yuta Arai.

My guide and I drift closer, so deeply entranced by these phenomenal and endangered spirits from Japanese myth and folklore that we fail to notice one of the figures on the bridge is billionaire magnate Choemon Masataka Tanabe.

His ancestral dynasty, one of the oldest in Japan, helped forge the nation's identity through the alchemy of earth and flame in this Arcadian hamlet. For more than 700 years, the iron-smelting furnaces of Yoshida in the Shimane Prefecture produced the raw mangled ingots cast into the steel blades of the samurai warriors, but now, formalism and hierachy have slipped away in shared wonder.

"Come and see," says Tanabe. His English is perfect. We chat idly under the glaring sun, then the 25th generation of the Tanabe aristocracy steps into his gleaming car, entourage follows, and he is gone.

Quiet epiphanies like this have been part of the daily communion since I stepped off the Shinkansen bullet train from Tokyo. I'm the first Australian journalist to attempt Walk Japan's pioneering nine-day San'in Quest on the western tip of Japan's main island of Honshu, nearly 1000 kilometres west of Tokyo. We arrived in Yoshida on the eighth day of the Quest, having traversed mountains crinkled like tin foil across the Oku-Izumo region. The odyssey that began in the city of Yamaguchi followed ancient pathways onto the vast karst plateau of Akiyoshidai before plunging downward into the castle towns of Hagi and Tsuwano. From there, it carved its way through the coastal hot spring sanctuary of Yunotsu Onsen to the UNESCO World Heritage silver mining depths of Iwami Ginzan, then pressed onward to the astounding Izumo Shrine - one of the oldest in Japan - before finally ascending countless stone steps to claim the castle heights of Matsue.

The journey has been filled with the thrills of discovery by foot, road and rail in one of the least populous and less-explored areas of the country. Only a sliver of inbound tourists make their way here and international tourism is virtually non-existent.

I count only five foreigners travelling across terrain that is, sometimes, defiantly untamed. Wilderness comes into sharp focus on the day that we tackle the legendary Hagi Okan trade route linking the Sea of Japan to the Seto Inland Sea.

Local guide Furutani-san is a poetic figure in his woven straw hat outlining the essentials of the day. "Bear very dangerous," he says. "Even if you find, please don't go near bear. Don't walk quickly. Keep holding bears' eye. Keep going back slowly."

Hang-on, did he actually just say that?

"To where?" gasps the American. "I don't know," replies Furutani-san. "I have this," he says, tendering his "bear spray gun". It looks like a can of hairspray. "Stay behind," he warns, turning to ascend a steep path with a silvery bell tinkling cautionary melody.

A folder attached to Furutani-san's jacket contains watercolour sketches of waypoints along the route - flat-stone ishidatami paving through ancient forests and drowsy villages delineated by wind-rippled rice paddies - landmarks easily recognised along our route.

Our guide's navigation system serves well on the pathway threading through rugged Chugoku Mountains. Before the Meiji Restoration dismantled the feudal system in 1868, this busy highway echoed for centuries with the clamour of samurai warriors and artisan merchants, but now these ancient routes have fallen mostly silent. They know only walkers like us: six reasonably fit hikers in the footsteps of Furutani-san.

The oldest member of our group, an 81-year-old Australian, is setting a cracking pace despite her own misgivings, pushing the edges of capability, walking poles clacking with every step. "Just keep moving," she grins, scaling up slopes into forests of wild cherry and dogwood, magnolia and oak, Japanese maple and chestnut.

Arai reminds us to stay together "like sticky rice" wherever there is bear, boar and snake lurking within the wall of green. Three piercing blows on a whistle heralds our entrance into bamboo groves clattering in thunderous percussion as unseen and unpredictable Japanese macaque monkeys forage for bamboo shoots and wild berries.

"They're getting their weapons together," says the American.

Japan faces a mounting ecological crisis from the relentless march of its bamboo forests. Landscapes once carefully managed by rural communities are now abandoned as people migrate to the cities, and these impenetrable thickets are suffocating native plant growth.

"You don't have to go to Kyoto with 20 million tourists to get a photo of a bamboo forest," smiles Arai.

Arai is our gentle and steadfast guide, a man of two cultures, born in Yokahama but moving to California at the age of two before returning to live in Japan in 2013. He is a trusted anchor for Walk Japan, answering questions with limitless patience. One lunchtime he leaves us to fend for ourselves with clear instructions about where to go for an hour. Immediately, we realise how difficult it is to navigate in remote rural regions, with neither insight nor language.

A volcanic coastal landscape at the foot of Mount Kasayama opens to the pathway through a spectacular camellia forest, past orchards sagging with ripe persimmon, towards the red tile-roofed town of Tsuwano. It's an enchanting "Little Kyoto" with main streets lined by Edo-era buildings and brightly-coloured koi carp teeming in roadside streams.

We slip shoes off at the threshold of an old inn called Noren Yado Meigetsu. Much of Japan's appeal lies in an aesthetic philosophy of wabi-sabi - the beauty found in transience and imperfection - and the concept is embodied by the gentle proprietor who comes to my room to assist with dressing for dinner.

Language is redundant in the intimacy of hands arranging a silk obi around my waist. Each fold is a deliberate and meaningful connection with tradition as she smoothes my kimono for just the proper glimpse of nape. I catch my reflection in the mirror - less "floating autumn leaf" and more "ox wearing clogs" as I struggle down the corridor - trying to achieve a semblance of elegance in rigid wooden sandals.

Culinary experiences are a highlight in the generations-old onsen inns (ryokans). A seamless blend of rich heritage and intuitive omotenashi hospitality unfolds daily through the uniformly high quality of Japanese cuisine on the San'in Quest.

Ryokans have been the source of respite over millennia, specialising in a cornucopia of delights: soba noodles, tempura, ramen, yakitori. Ours are artfully executed in a medley of nuanced taste and texture that begin, on one occasion, with warmed sake and jellyfish. On another, with golden thread fin in an edible cloth that flashes with iridescent purple trim, followed by vegetables and miso soup.

There's something marvellously separate and singular about a civilisation that endures and flourishes on its own terms.

In Yuda Onsen, at Meisho Sansuien, we are welcomed each afternoon to the stillness of a tatami-matted tea room with the rhythmic whisk of green matcha brush. In Hagi, a local restaurant called Kappo Chiyo is famed for its homegrown banquets and locally caught fish.

Several sought-after delicacies are on the menu - Wagyu beef, sea urchin and, God forbid, whale - with a chef licensed to handle puffer fish. If not treated properly, the curls of fugu in my broth could be fatal, so there's a subcortical corner of my brain screaming: "Do not eat this", but Arai smiles with calm reassurance.

"Everything is done well here. Itadakimasu," he says, repeating the humble-honorific meaning to receive with thanks.

Most walking days end with a restorative soak in a mineral-rich hot spring onsen bath before surrendering to the firm embrace of a buckwheat pillow.

In Tsuwano, we wake anticipating the long climb upwards through glorious vermilion torii gates, beneath the impressive Shinto shrine of Taikodani Inari Jinja. It's guarded by the fox god, Inari, a deity still worshipped by the Japanese. Visitors have written hopes and dreams on small wooden tablets to be received by the spirits or gods. One written in English reads as strangely intimate - "I wish that my marriage will be saved" - beside those seeking success in business and good health.

These are the tangible connections between earthly and spiritual realms. Arai shows us how to leave our own small message of hope. Bow then clap twice, bow again, make a wish, make a small offering of money to take it home.

"Is this something we should do as pilgrims?" I ask.

The coastal port of Yunotsu Onsen brings a different kind of blessing. We are staying for two nights at Ryokan Nogawaya where my room overlooks a quiet street. Restorative sleep is accompanied by a night-time symphony of frogs.

Waking early, there's a wonderful sense of purpose, strapping on boots for the trek through mountainous terrain between the coastal port of Yunotsu and the historic mining town of Omori. It's the sixth day, we're heading for Iwami Ginzan, the largest silver mine in Japanese history and one of only a few places indicated on European maps of Japan in the 16th century.

Legend tells of its discovery by a wealthy merchant who, sailing along the coast in the 1500s, spotted a mystifying light shining high on the mountain top. Investigating this ethereal beacon, he found exposed silver veins and established what would become the mine on the slopes of Senoyama.

At its peak, the mine produced more than 200 tonnes of silver annually and helped fund the Tokugawa shogunate, making it one of the most economically significant mining operations in the world.

Water dripping over mossy outcrops becomes constant companion on this forest trail where sections, slippery with mud, are sometimes challenging. Atmospheric glimpses into the dark underworld appear through crevices cracked open in the hills.

And then suddenly, too soon, our tour concludes. We are hurtling by car towards crowded Hiroshima. Arrival in an insulated Western-style bedroom with an ensuite bathroom feels oddly disconcerting. The traditional yukata dressing gown is NOT to be worn to dinner and there is no soaking in a hot tub with the camaraderie of the quiet old inns.

I've been transformed by Japan. The untapped potential of the country's ancient byways and the strangely contradictory warm formality of remote Japan have only confirmed this mysterious country as an addiction.

It feels as if it's been mine alone to discover. Stepping upwards to heaven on red-torii lined steps and into bamboo forests clacking with macaque monkeys. Beneath so many layers of history and culture, Japan will always offer more than a lifetime of discovery.

The writer was a guest of Walk Japan