After a relatively lonely walk for several days, when we came to the Yari ridge it became a game of dodging the hoards of grockles. This turned out surprisingly well thanks to James' superior planning, and only our last night was spent at a busy hut. Unusually we were also not the only gaijin in the village.To prove it, here is one, just about to dive off down the Daikiretto.
Read more...Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
There is an infamous deep cut (daikiretto) towards the left of the famous Kita Alps ridge. It is about 300m deep, and is quite a narrow ridge with big drops all around. We have done it before but this time we did it the easier way from North to South (right to left on yesterday's panorama). Having been fortunate enough to survive the first time, I was a bit apprehensive about doing it again. Turned out it was really easy. Does that look scary to you? It is true that if you jumped off hard enough, you'd be falling for 100s of meters, but why would you do that?
Click here for an alternative take. It wasn't icy when we did it, of course, which would make it much more difficult. On an earlier trip this year we viewed the daikiretto from the south (north end of it visible here), and the path in the snow squiggling down the ridge was quite worrying.
Monday, August 2, 2010
The sun strikes the most famous Kita Alps ridge at just before raw egg o'clock.
The original, 14148 pixels across, is a panorama made up from about 7 photos from James' LX3. I think that interwebs do it no justice and intend to print it out several feet across and stick to to a wall somewhere. You can too! Here it is on SmugMug (split in two for reasons of economy).
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Good eating on a raicho (basically a ptarmigan) I reckon, but unfortunately it too is off the menu in Japan, due to being a cute and treasured symbol of the mountains. So whenever we see one we exact revenge on any Japanese within earshot by exclaiming the same phrase they use when looking at horrible sea monsters at the aquarium .. "oishiiiii sou"... (It looks delicious).
Enjoy the grouse season everyone...
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Since the diet includes anything that can be scraped from the seashore, innards (gizzards, faces, beaks, raw liver, guts...), hornets, barely cooked chicken, raw egg, whale and horse, I tend to laugh at the apparent distress caused by the suggestion of eating anything considered cute and cuddly. Monkeys are thus off the menu and so the troupe that lives near the busy Kamikochi nature trail coexist happily with humans in an way that it is hard to imagine in the UK. Since people do nothing to the monkeys apart from photograph them, they pass by, apparently unbothered, at close quarters. This teeny tiny baby was photographed with my 60mm macro, not a long telephoto!
[Kamikochi is where many walks in the North Japan Alps start and finish.]
Friday, July 30, 2010
Let's mountain life
Japanese mountain culture may not be for everyone.
5am: raw egg and seaweed breakfast
6:00am: high altitude toilet (3000m)
On the bright side, I wrecked my boots, so we had a good reason to attend the first day opening of the newly relocated mountain shop, Kamoshika, in Yokohama. Great shop. Lovely new blue nubuck boots!
Friday, July 23, 2010
photo.jpg
Since summer arrived we have gone to the mountains. Same wifi hut as
last year - the only one we have found...fortunately. That's famous
Yarigatake in the distance.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Often, when I walk past this house on the way home from the station in Kamakura, I take its picture. This time James didn't recognise it, and when the actual dwelling was pointed out, complained that, "It looks nothing like that". What a great compliment to the picktur taker!
Read more...Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Since yesterday was Marine Day everyone obediently went to the beach, where (apparently) you couldn't see sand for the bodies. We visited the cool shady trees instead, where we met about as many frogs as people.
I wonder what make of frog this is. There is a frog on the internets that is handily called the Japanese Brown Frog which does looks similar...
I didn't crop the image since I like the leafy green border, so you might want to view bigger (click here to do that).
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Summer has come, the sky is blue, and beauty is all around.
What slightly troubles me is that the Japan adapted me can happily walk round in temperatures that make the partly metal Nikon N80s hot to the touch. Well, the one caveat to my adaption is that I am not actually a camel, and so the happiness continues as long as I can drink about 500ml an hour.
Camera snobs poo poo lightweight plastic cameras - but they win in either hot or cold weather!
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