Photos from Mount Mitsutogesan in Yamanashi prefecture, on the far western outskirts of the Greater Tokyo Area.
Pictures taken with an Olympus em-1 and M.Zuiko 12–40mm 2.8 or 75mm 1.8; or on the iPhone X.
In the spirit of ukiyo-e woodblock prints and sumi-e monochrome ink painting, some judicious processing in Olympus Workspace, DxO PhotoLab, and Adobe Lightroom has been applied to emphasize the feel of this dramatic landscape.
Some judicious processing of many of these photos emphasizes the “end of the earth “fuinki,” or atmosphere, of this remote corner of Japan.
Happy Mountain Day, 2016! If you don’t know already, today — Thursday, 11 August, 2016 — is the first-ever Mountain Day national holiday here in Japan.
That’s what today’s image on Google Japan is all about, if you didn’t know https://www.google.co.jp/
TBH, though R. has the day off work and school hasn’t yet started, we don’t have plans to do anything specific to celebrate. We figure we already spend a lot of time in the mountains – in fact we’re just back from our summer trip to the Canadian Rockies! – and besides, it’s uncomfortably hot on main-island Honshu in August. Besides, summer is a busy time in Japan, and the mountain trails and huts will be crowded with students and tourists and other holiday-makers.
We prefer to do our own thing, at our own pace 🙂 We’ll celebrate the mountains we’ve been blessed with in our own way, as we always have…
Meantime, here’s Kachou Fuugetsu “Flower Bird Wind Moon:” a gallery of pictures from our outdoor adventures in Japan
花鳥風月, Kachou Fuugetsu: “experience the beauty of nature, learn about yourself.”
A tangle of scrub pine, roots bone-white in the gunmetal blue of a Hokkaido dusk. Around us low, forested mountains rolled out to sea. In one direction, the Russian Far East; in another, Tokyo and main-island Japan. Only 1500 meters (4500 feet) above sea level, but the harsh climate of Hokkaido — Japan’s northernmost, frontier island — put us already well above treeline. Below, I knew, higuma brown bears, cousin to the grizzly back home in Canada, foraged among the bamboo grass for bedtime snacks. We stood in the triangular shadow of the summit as night crept up-slope, looked over a lightless wilderness, and marvelled at the irony of two city kids from Canada travelling halfway around the world, to one of the most urban and densely populated parts of Asia, to wind up alone on a mountaintop in bear country.
Grizzlies weren’t high on the list of things my admittedly eclectic research on Japan had prepared me for: a sporadic diet of Lone Wolf and Cub, Black Rain, Kurosawa movies, Akira, and Godzilla, had prepared me more for the 85 million-person conurbation on main-island Honshu, the Tokyo-Osaka megalopolis. Nature, for all I knew, was limited to the disciplined gardens of bonsai trees and ikebana flower arrangements, rather than big-N Nature red in tooth and claw.
But in fact, as I was quickly learning, this high tech, near-future, post-industrial nation still has plenty of countryside and even wilderness. In fact, in many parts of the archipelago it seems more like the people are squeezed into what arable land exists, mainly on the coasts, while large parts of the island interiors remain uninhabitable, and thus undeveloped.
Of course, Hokkaido is not main-island Honshu. In fact, that’s kind of the point:
Japan is a surprisingly big and diverse place. 6,000 islands hang pendulously from wintry Russian Far East, all the way to distant Taiwan in the semi-tropical south. Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku and to an extent Hokkaido and Okinawa make up the bulk of what most visitors think of as “Japan,” but there are literally thousands of smaller islands which unfurl into the East China Sea.
Some islands are heavily developed, such as main-island Honshu with the Tokyo-Osaka conurbation (though, as you will learn, there’s still a lot of wildness left even on Honshu); others still have untouched forests of antediluvian fern and palm — such as on Iriomote — and millennia-old cedar — on Yakushima — at their mountainous hearts.
Apparently, in Japan’s Shinto and Buddhist traditions, such stone markers — among other purposes — protect liminal areas such as crossroads, graveyards, and execution grounds. Yamabushi Buddhist monks sometimes meditate in waterfalls.
Autumn is settling over Tokyo, but in the town of Kogamane — four and a half by bus from Tokyo — in the highlands of Nagano prefecture, it’s in full flourish. Kogamane is at1660 meters (4,980 feet) elevation, and is home base to the cable car ropeway that carries hikers up to Senjojiki Cirque and the peaks of the Chuo Central Alps. But Senjojiki is another story… coming soon! Continue reading “Japan Photo Hikes: “Koyo,” Autumn Leaves at Kogamane, Nagano”
The Kiyosato Kogen Highlands rise to the southern foot of the Yatsugatake volcanic mountains in Yamanashi prefecture, near the border with Nagano. Yamanashi is most famous, of course, as home to Mount Fuji, and on a clear day you can see Fujisan rising solitary behind a screen of mountains from the Southern Alps and Chichibu ranges. Continue reading “Japan Photo Gallery: Kiyosato Kogen Highlands”
花鳥風月 Kachou Fuugetsu = “experience the beauty of nature, learn about yourself.”
As you will no doubt read about in a future blog post, Mount Mitakesan, a – small sacred mountain in western Tokyo, has been a power spot, a day-long or overnight escape from the city, for R. and I since we first started dating like, 11 years ago. It’s where we got married, and we return there at least once a year to renew our vows, and pray to the local tengu warrior bird demons to watch over us in this life.
I recently uploaded a whole set of pictures from Mitakesan to my page at 500px. Follow the link to see the full set; here, for your viewing pleasure, are a few of the most popular pictures as chosen by 500pxers… Continue reading “Kachou Fuugetsu Photo Blog: Mitakesan”
Update 03/17/16: Ka Chou Fuu Getsu “Flower Bird Wind Moon:” an Exlorer’s Guide to Japan’s Wild Places now posted!
(October 17, 2015: I’m continuously updating a new page with landscape and nature pictures from around Japan. Check it out!)
The Japanese have a word, or words in this case, for it: 花鳥風月, kachou fuugetsu which literally means Flower Bird Wind Moon but commonly translates to “experience the beauty of nature, learn about yourself”.
Sometimes, in the middle of, say, big-city Tokyo, it may be hard to remember that Japan actually has quite a bit of nature, even within city limits. It’s kinda like when I was growing up in Toronto: in the working-class neighbourhoods where I lived, the seas and rivers, forests and mountains that graced souvenir postcards of Canada seemed a world away from the railroad tracks, parking lots, and concrete-covered playgrounds where we jumped our bikes and played tag as kids.
But out of sight does not mean out of mind, if that makes sense, and so it is with all that wilderness in The Great White North: just because all that open space and beauty and freedom was hardly even a twinkle in our jaded eyes didn’t make it any less real. Same in Tokyo. Just because it’s the biggest city in the world doesn’t mean it can’t have some wild nature on its doorstep, or outskirts at least… Continue reading “Kachou Fuugetsu: Flower Bird Wind Moon “experience the beauty of nature, learn about yourself””
Big Sushi, Little Fishes: a japan blog 