tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76180371727590940562024-03-19T03:08:03.281+01:00One Hundred MountainsOn and around Japan's Hyakumeizan and other mountainsProject Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.comBlogger577125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-89959395826134092742024-03-10T13:22:00.011+01:002024-03-10T20:16:14.086+01:00Indomitable<p>Sorry this is a bit late for International Women’s Day, but <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Niquille" target="_blank">Nicole Niquille </a>really does deserve a day to herself. An interview in the latest edition of the Swiss Alpine Club’s bimonthly magazine brings us up to date with her story. </p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIN6kJsCji0YCb-TvpmElYwnZuTrsZW0pl7M4flPFMrcijOVsi_HSPxAhPtg_IPf4Z5U8Z-AXRcLmTduNUSu_j1QppZoPlpWyrNsLBBPPT37c1xfkVFb28NoTed4KNDnbhM2bp5afnfL1kZ7gP7oej1FOdlWqN2lGM71ozuSS2l0JHCKe6UfkuSAmuk0U/s1067/Screenshot%202024-03-10%20at%2010.46.20.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="382" data-original-width="1067" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIN6kJsCji0YCb-TvpmElYwnZuTrsZW0pl7M4flPFMrcijOVsi_HSPxAhPtg_IPf4Z5U8Z-AXRcLmTduNUSu_j1QppZoPlpWyrNsLBBPPT37c1xfkVFb28NoTed4KNDnbhM2bp5afnfL1kZ7gP7oej1FOdlWqN2lGM71ozuSS2l0JHCKe6UfkuSAmuk0U/w400-h144/Screenshot%202024-03-10%20at%2010.46.20.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />Back in the 1980s, Niquille was one of Switzerland’s top alpinists – notice that the phrase isn’t “top female alpinists”. She went to K2 in 1985 and Everest in 1986, qualifying as a mountain guide, the first Swiss woman to do so, in the same year. “There was no feminist motive, I just wanted to live in the mountains,” she is quoted as saying in the interview.<br /><br />Eight years later, on a Sunday evening in May 1994, her life changed forever. While she was picking mushrooms just a few hundred metres from her house, a falling stone hit her on the head. When she woke up in hospital, she was a paraplegic. <br /><br /><div>During the next two years, she had to relearn everything, from speaking to moving her fingers and limbs. Despite all her efforts, she could not learn to walk again. Yet the mountains continue to give her strength: "When I freeze at night and can't pull up the blanket, I think of the nights in the airy tent on K2." <br /><br />“You never accept your disability, but you have to live with it,” Niquille says. Living with it meant, in this case, opening “Chez Nicole”, a mountain hostelry which she has run since 1997 with her husband Marco on the banks of Lac de Taney at an altitude of 1,408 metres. <br /><br />The restaurant led, in turn, to her next project. One of her kitchen helpers, a Nepalese Sherpa, told her about her sister <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasang_Lhamu_Sherpa" target="_blank">Pasang Lhamu Sherpa</a>. In April 1993, Pasang was the first Nepali woman to reach the summit of Everest, but lost her life while descending. <br /><br />Deciding to get involved, Niquille set up a foundation and invested 100,000 francs of her disability capital in building <a href="https://www.hopital-lukla.ch/nicole-niquille/" target="_blank">a hospital at Lukla</a>, the starting point for treks to the Everest region. Opening its doors in 2005, the hospital runs on funds raised by Niquille’s foundation, about 450,000 francs annually.<br /><br />Without the accident, Niquille says, she “would have led a different life and the hospital in Lukla would not exist”. For herself, she has no regrets: “There is no happiness or unhappiness in life, only people with different life stories,” she says. <br /><br />And even if she were to be offered the use of her legs again, she would accept this only every other day. “That way I would really appreciate them and I would know exactly what I had to do on the days I was able to walk.”</div><div><br /><b>References</b><br /><br /><a href="https://www.sac-cas.ch/fr/detail/jai-du-trouver-une-utilite-a-ma-chaise-pour-pouvoir-laccepter-43616/" target="_blank">«J’ai dû trouver une utilité à ma chaise pour pouvoir l’accepter» Rencontre avec Nicole Niquille</a>, interview by Martine Brocard in<i> Les Alpes/Die Alpen</i>, the bimonthly journal of the Swiss Alpine Club, edition 1/2024.</div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-74182156093126366612024-03-10T13:21:00.005+01:002024-03-10T20:12:06.605+01:00Hard core (3)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFDjefNgVHmd4zpI2BftjmTh-TGLGkjF6k-JOaKOMmrpRfpBz6JFRQffmNw08YwB2QyBzyJYZkh-ZECakchE6sDtW36xZbSnjwCulXNQX0TeXSyRfaEbCXTYShYfgUFeqJ9aiWDxmqh2m4rGAYXNiceueOHJqTbSLp_wldFf0HEjxC9WhyXeZpZk-Kdc/s1080/IMG_0680-dent%20blanche.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFDjefNgVHmd4zpI2BftjmTh-TGLGkjF6k-JOaKOMmrpRfpBz6JFRQffmNw08YwB2QyBzyJYZkh-ZECakchE6sDtW36xZbSnjwCulXNQX0TeXSyRfaEbCXTYShYfgUFeqJ9aiWDxmqh2m4rGAYXNiceueOHJqTbSLp_wldFf0HEjxC9WhyXeZpZk-Kdc/w480-h640/IMG_0680-dent%20blanche.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />While climbing Les Ecrins by the south-east face, the extreme alpinist André Roch (1906-2002) encountered loose rock:<br /><br /><i>The climb became complicated, slabs succeeded cracks and the wall was always sheer and exposed. The clearest recollection I have of this ascent is the following. Somewhere Gréloz got up on to a big block at the foot of a wall. He was able to reach hand holds at the top of the wall and was endeavouring to pull himself up. Hardly had he taken his feet from the big block when over it toppled, disappearing into space. This time I really thought Gréloz must fall, but he remained hanging by his hands and then succeeded in pulling himself up. Once he was safe I reassured him by explaining that I had had him well belayed round a rock the whole time. It was then my turn to go up, and the minute I left my famous belay, it too disappeared into space. This goes to show that the south-east face is not exactly sound. We had a good laugh over this adventure, which had caused us considerable agitation.</i><br /><br /><b>References</b><br /><br />André Roch, <i>Climbs of My Youth</i>, Lindsay Drummond London, 1949. Header image is a photo by André Roch of climbers on the north face of the Dent Blanche, published in <i>Mountaineering in Photographs</i> by André Roch, Adams and Charles Black, London 1947. Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-82765111307416660942024-03-10T13:10:00.004+01:002024-03-10T13:54:52.799+01:00Hard core (2)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXcnJU3bYwrZFgS_SOlTFjy_onPCSTgQpzbaE9_nPv4bjIhusW737uWD4qsQV3xk6Uw08E8uI72Iznf58ATRfvjkn6hqilskwL5a0IF5ESCXyXATuLjVN91enjHvlICRHEU_NcXP9rQeDWKkZsgoFBUIYj08Bst3SSDBsJdgAxRGGU9ePqVQ-hNCgIrWc/s1600/petit-dru.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXcnJU3bYwrZFgS_SOlTFjy_onPCSTgQpzbaE9_nPv4bjIhusW737uWD4qsQV3xk6Uw08E8uI72Iznf58ATRfvjkn6hqilskwL5a0IF5ESCXyXATuLjVN91enjHvlICRHEU_NcXP9rQeDWKkZsgoFBUIYj08Bst3SSDBsJdgAxRGGU9ePqVQ-hNCgIrWc/w480-h640/petit-dru.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />While bivouacking during the first descent of the Aiguille du Dru’s north face, the extreme alpinist André Roch (1906-2002) dreamt that the mountain itself had taken on a personality:<br /><br /><i>Sitting back to back on some stones we endeavoured to sleep, but in my state of feverish over-excitement my thoughts ran thus: <br /><br />The Dru is so beautiful, so graceful, so radiant in the sunshine when he thrusts upwards into the blue sky. But now he is terrible, gigantic, furious, as he leans over us. He is a demon—a cyclops perhaps. At times it grew lighter and I could see his head, but I could not make out whether he had two eyes or only one. The black, streaming muscles of his chest, towered over us. How huge and frightening he was! Were he to see us, he would be infuriated and, with one flip, would send us down to the Nant Blanc glacier.<br /><br />But, old Dru, you can’t see us, and you can’t touch us with your foolish great stones hurtling down some sixty feet wide of us. Hush! not a word—something’s going to happen. He is stirring. A fierce wind howls. It must be the hour when old man Dru takes his shower.<br /><br /></i><div><i>And sure enough, a veritable water spout poured down; and how pleased he seemed to be! Crouching on our perch we caught it full force without daring to move.<br /><br />Wait a bit, Dru, old fellow; we may be small, but we still have some tricks up our sleeve and among them more than another 300 feet of rope still untouched.<br /><br /></i></div><div><i>Gradually the moon rose and then dawn broke. The old Dru cannot have slept much and, because of his queer notion of taking a shower at two in the morning, we hadn’t slept at all. But this was no time to argue with him. We tried to swallow some squares of chocolate, but without success. We could see the glacier, which was not far away. Beneath us opened an immense chimney some 300 feet high, down which we resumed our long series of rappels. Weakened by so many trials, feverish, stiff and trembling, we slid painfully down the length of our wet line. Beneath the continuous cascades of water that splashed the entire wall, we discovered a bed of crystals. There on a ledge I espied an enormous smoked specimen. But to get at it I should have had to stride round a tricky crack, and I preferred to give up the gem…</i><br /><br /><b>References</b><br /><br />André Roch, <i>Climbs of My Youth</i>, Lindsay Drummond London, 1949. Header image is a photo by Georges Tairraz of the north face of the Petit Dru, published in <i>Mountaineering in Photographs</i> by André Roch, Adams and Charles Black, London 1947. </div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-17432639779873129452024-03-10T09:23:00.005+01:002024-03-10T13:10:28.758+01:00 Hard core (1)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfx5yp4U6PUor38tbR0ukwYuG1Y0fiAnxz2ID4GEsESGSgN280uxFVDmAWOMGXpfXHRPDhDKPdCX10Q0ck9zImd1_jEfI3Prfa-X1RRuGPhYzOWje57ShxchLmZHwA3ryyQaHKOIf5zY8aynp6Lho7lEv3q8nnFzrcGWAVXH9h9pb-_pebWt5giFNoSN0/s1080/frontispiece.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfx5yp4U6PUor38tbR0ukwYuG1Y0fiAnxz2ID4GEsESGSgN280uxFVDmAWOMGXpfXHRPDhDKPdCX10Q0ck9zImd1_jEfI3Prfa-X1RRuGPhYzOWje57ShxchLmZHwA3ryyQaHKOIf5zY8aynp6Lho7lEv3q8nnFzrcGWAVXH9h9pb-_pebWt5giFNoSN0/w480-h640/frontispiece.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The extreme alpinist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André_Roch" target="_blank">André Roch</a> (1906-2002) started learning his trade at an early age. His autobiographical work, <i>Climbs of My Youth</i>, explains ….<br /><br /><i>When I was ten my father had already introduced me to mountaineering. In summer we would stay at some centre for excursions and on Sundays in the spring and autumn we would explore the Préalpes or the Saléve.<br /><br />One day a solitary climber had fallen on a climb on the Saléve known as the “Grande Varappe’”’ and the rescue party had brought him down on a stretcher to a quarry shed at the foot of the mountain. We were passing, and my father was called in to certify the man’s death. As my brother and I were full of ardour and enthusiasm for climbing, my father decided to let us see the body, in order to give us food for reflection. As far as I can remember the dead man was in a pitiable state, but nothing very dreadful was visible; he was tied to the stretcher and well wrapped up in tarpaulin. Half the face was smashed in, but the whole head was muffled up so that we could not see much, One leg was broken and the shoe that stuck out from beneath the wrappings could be twisted about in any direction; and this my brother and I did each in turn. The bloodstains were dry and coagulated and did not look very bad. <br /><br />Nearby, over a drink, the rescuers were discussing the accident, and judging from their conversation, they had had great difficulty in.recovering the body and getting it down. When my father had finished we continued on our way. He asked us what we thought about it all, and I replied that it had rather spoiled our taste for anything much that day. <br /><br />My father said nothing, but he judged that the effect had been slight and would not be lasting.</i><br /><br /><b>References</b><br /><br />André Roch, <i>Climbs of My Youth</i>, Lindsay Drummond London, 1949. The header image is the frontispiece from this edition: Roch was as talented a mountain photographer as he was an alpinist. Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-63401255089916726952024-02-29T09:36:00.009+01:002024-02-29T09:42:59.045+01:00Images and ink (53)<div><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix3owOMUM6Lr7fgNbHPxFH6qsEBB7Xt-Rpf-dc0ygoMpTuLktarNw7kI2HQL0xKAPTM0OvQ2YKVzm_w1Y4EXWdCDGb41MccgMne9i_28sA-z3y4vLiC7lHlYNqrA0V37F1QH8-aowrtZrGepLvnaHoNWEKpzVqOiXDSa4ccvGa-cT2dcYTSIiT4ThNCr8/s1300/everest-glow2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="871" data-original-width="1300" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix3owOMUM6Lr7fgNbHPxFH6qsEBB7Xt-Rpf-dc0ygoMpTuLktarNw7kI2HQL0xKAPTM0OvQ2YKVzm_w1Y4EXWdCDGb41MccgMne9i_28sA-z3y4vLiC7lHlYNqrA0V37F1QH8-aowrtZrGepLvnaHoNWEKpzVqOiXDSa4ccvGa-cT2dcYTSIiT4ThNCr8/w400-h268/everest-glow2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Image</b>: Everest and Makalu at sunset, image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure. <br /><br /><b>Ink</b>: <i>A Centenary Tribute to the Alpine Club</i>, by Arnold Lunn, published by the Swiss Foundation for Mountain Research (1957).</div><div><br /></div><i> The Makalu expedition, precisely because it was a model of organisation, lacked drama ... A famous journalist asked the expedition leader Jean Franco hopefully whether there had not been any incidents. “Alas!” replied Franco, “there was no crevasse into which we fell, no avalanche which swept away our camp. At 8,000 metres. we felt as though we were on the summit of Mont Blanc. Nine of us reached the top. Three ascents in three days. You can’t call that a conquest. And we didn’t even have frozen feet.” “Well, then,” said the journalist, “nothing happened.” “But what he did not ask,” comments Franco, “was why nothing happened.” </i><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-4561717967669155912024-02-27T20:49:00.009+01:002024-03-02T21:17:32.517+01:00A meizanologist's diary (59) 17 January: in the supermarket, we spot a stall setting out red beans for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setsubun" target="_blank">Setsubun</a>, the day before spring arrives in the old calendar (this year it’ll fall on 3 February). The “lucky beans” have been endorsed, perhaps even blessed, by the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamabushi" target="_blank">yamabushi</a></i> up on Haguroyama, one of the <a href="https://dewasanzan.com" target="_blank">three sacred mountains</a> of Dewa. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJie8FMDeBvksKbNmfbEGNVth1s8g9jXAIgIY29uwRpf8TcZNwTwdT0tCwPXAAGI0E22aWyZFGiVOcnZ_9HmC3oLVaqSQn-jOKBsFpZ1Yiw3HdO3K2pevTZWJVePI94u37K0UYoqTvVNAlxmTwvzKch3K4Of19MsddYNhXnLmiZ1Ceoe4QZi-iu9gkgmU/s1280/packet.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJie8FMDeBvksKbNmfbEGNVth1s8g9jXAIgIY29uwRpf8TcZNwTwdT0tCwPXAAGI0E22aWyZFGiVOcnZ_9HmC3oLVaqSQn-jOKBsFpZ1Yiw3HdO3K2pevTZWJVePI94u37K0UYoqTvVNAlxmTwvzKch3K4Of19MsddYNhXnLmiZ1Ceoe4QZi-iu9gkgmU/w480-h640/packet.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />The mountain mystics are irrepressible. According to Carmen Blacker in <i>The Catalpa Bow</i>, a study of shamanistic practices in Japan, the Meiji government proscribed the Shugendō order in 1873 under legislation designed to suppress all cults in which Shinto and Buddhism were mixed. But the yamabushi held out until more liberal times by associating themselves more closely with Buddhist sects. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwSCM2fJyM72JkJJEhRqTMBgoYt8D92JDTq_8J72TYDR9D2tv3PUEFSHA4Lqb7HTuCQB_orGDCWVdYhLMfpQSP97Gd8-FMNTgUNenyrCHQiYPIEHZHvJtje8frxxPGVrGOELwxUKvwo9N5vQVHtNt7Ogorn38MDEFuIaeVtOVGEgvz1cehZlCffs5H0mc/s1280/setsubun-stall.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwSCM2fJyM72JkJJEhRqTMBgoYt8D92JDTq_8J72TYDR9D2tv3PUEFSHA4Lqb7HTuCQB_orGDCWVdYhLMfpQSP97Gd8-FMNTgUNenyrCHQiYPIEHZHvJtje8frxxPGVrGOELwxUKvwo9N5vQVHtNt7Ogorn38MDEFuIaeVtOVGEgvz1cehZlCffs5H0mc/w400-h300/setsubun-stall.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />After the war, Blacker adds, “several new groups made their appearance under the title of Shugendō”. And now, apparently, the Haguro sect is promoting demon-deterring legumes in a supermarket near you. They're full of beans again, these yamabushi ...<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-40777928506528665092024-02-15T10:24:00.002+01:002024-02-15T11:08:47.265+01:00A meizanologist's diary (58)<p> 15 January: while driving us into the foothills of the Hakusan range, the Sensei debriefs me on my solo <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2024/01/a-meizanologists-diary-54.html" target="_blank">visit to Adatara</a>. She isn’t impressed by my route-finding expedients: “You know,” she says, “you can’t rely on following tracks in a whiteout – even your own footprints could be snowed over in half an hour.”</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrsXiHb91f1YFnF68OXKTaw97nudk3t2seSWY_0JKf6S-Lkc8sImjt0w4zt0uvYKZ1IVbZ529fbxoKHglitsVYEmLQHf5RxiY8PlD6er1MuHujUblqiTdnb5K8iCj5RBR3VGHeVwSMqOiLdbLYfCcTeieOKTe0g83OfF2faF-vJZeTkcreHNtJDtJOEj0/s1300/pano-toritate-chiaroscuro-sq2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="977" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrsXiHb91f1YFnF68OXKTaw97nudk3t2seSWY_0JKf6S-Lkc8sImjt0w4zt0uvYKZ1IVbZ529fbxoKHglitsVYEmLQHf5RxiY8PlD6er1MuHujUblqiTdnb5K8iCj5RBR3VGHeVwSMqOiLdbLYfCcTeieOKTe0g83OfF2faF-vJZeTkcreHNtJDtJOEj0/w480-h640/pano-toritate-chiaroscuro-sq2.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />There's no time to reply – heck, she’s right – as we’ve reached the trailhead for Toritate-yama (1,308 metres). Except for us, the carpark is empty on this grey Monday morning, and snow is already swirling down. Yesterday, under skies of a flawless winter blue, probably a hundred people skied and snowshoed up this mountain.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvReFLLV0LORUWEXqG3vGZiidPXT0mIh66OwRoEeyHadssk0QTm2U_GKZ56k8NOoKUi_f7ue_HPPcaF-FPk71UWw0mDKlMxLHiTdplUvOuReh_tRrIGxfBPhjlD8udLKzhcKIj3x8ZoDaw6JB9tQR9UczAfu1pvvDDo_qzLidnG-HklH9vfYoJ01myTY/s1300/DSCN4086-toritate-cabins.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="880" data-original-width="1300" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvReFLLV0LORUWEXqG3vGZiidPXT0mIh66OwRoEeyHadssk0QTm2U_GKZ56k8NOoKUi_f7ue_HPPcaF-FPk71UWw0mDKlMxLHiTdplUvOuReh_tRrIGxfBPhjlD8udLKzhcKIj3x8ZoDaw6JB9tQR9UczAfu1pvvDDo_qzLidnG-HklH9vfYoJ01myTY/w400-h271/DSCN4086-toritate-cabins.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />“Well, at least we’ll have a trail to follow,” I say to the Sensei as we put our snowshoes on. And, indeed, something like a trench seems to lead off through a deserted holiday village and up into the forest. Half an hour later, we are still following the trench, now lightly snowed over, as it takes us across a plateau towards the summit slopes of Toritate.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAqm1SpmX6J_InM4dcNb25oymC2d1B0xhxfD3iiwSHETn6u8q70k39QbISl3ThyphenhyphenxIj9_tQ38tGSVpBzBx84ZjejuX2TqTwISJvtUkAQt2EHNY_o3S8BXB1_eggaggz5ajtj2emRh2Eqow9_T9kzaHjtwMrWePxuORixOmhHfeWo_rw3VneYlW7Jo9BRnM/s1300/DSCN4093-toritate-first-slope.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="972" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAqm1SpmX6J_InM4dcNb25oymC2d1B0xhxfD3iiwSHETn6u8q70k39QbISl3ThyphenhyphenxIj9_tQ38tGSVpBzBx84ZjejuX2TqTwISJvtUkAQt2EHNY_o3S8BXB1_eggaggz5ajtj2emRh2Eqow9_T9kzaHjtwMrWePxuORixOmhHfeWo_rw3VneYlW7Jo9BRnM/w478-h640/DSCN4093-toritate-first-slope.jpg" width="478" /></a></div><br />Next, a wide track zig-zags up through the trees. Although there’s still a trench to show us the way, the going becomes harder as we gain height and the snow deepens. So I’m glad to hear voices behind us; they must belong to the three men who arrived by car at the trailhead just as we left. Surely we’ll be able to hand over the lead soon…<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPdSobfiq5iNSAzjLkkLi8qDj8CzdAAT_c6WsvIxessYbr0T36IyU5-cUNvVuRIHl6XD2RLphNy8u5odGdmQ9c8TcoUw1jodyuYkHugx3UkAhknmSoErJVGdSBSu4e8pOmOt7uRMwvVyike_E3HagJldxyKWYAyvdN8fT_cG2vuNYCDmiOE3GUM-JDDg/s1300/DSCN4104-toritate-plateau.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1041" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPdSobfiq5iNSAzjLkkLi8qDj8CzdAAT_c6WsvIxessYbr0T36IyU5-cUNvVuRIHl6XD2RLphNy8u5odGdmQ9c8TcoUw1jodyuYkHugx3UkAhknmSoErJVGdSBSu4e8pOmOt7uRMwvVyike_E3HagJldxyKWYAyvdN8fT_cG2vuNYCDmiOE3GUM-JDDg/w512-h640/DSCN4104-toritate-plateau.jpg" width="512" /></a></div><br />The track ends, and we start climbing a ridge. The wind gets up, as it must ever since <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Bernoulli" target="_blank">Daniel Bernoulli</a> of Basel (1700-1782) discovered his effect, driving the snowflakes into our face – these aren’t the fine spicules that sand-blasted me on Adatara a few days ago, but crisply formed and quite substantial six-pointed snow crystals, courtesy of the Japan Sea coast's maritime climate. So they sting.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddqg5Isun0rAF5usSCGewcpsiH7uvmwhAYXDvEPQUGCZIXv9phWhniieIm5vyHyrPfr88IJUjnyUeZ3yu3El4fJgR9S8TaRVlBWJ56ThD2iphFMabt7zNwMWzDd84J2cKjuuucl2x2hwazZCUFgeDxzLK0R3wyNJ88Br3tEExOs-LwQdc_ueBIxdN1vE/s1300/DSCN4123-toritate-track.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1009" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddqg5Isun0rAF5usSCGewcpsiH7uvmwhAYXDvEPQUGCZIXv9phWhniieIm5vyHyrPfr88IJUjnyUeZ3yu3El4fJgR9S8TaRVlBWJ56ThD2iphFMabt7zNwMWzDd84J2cKjuuucl2x2hwazZCUFgeDxzLK0R3wyNJ88Br3tEExOs-LwQdc_ueBIxdN1vE/w496-h640/DSCN4123-toritate-track.jpg" width="496" /></a></div><br />Now the trench we've relied on fades into nothing – overnight, the wind and snow have effaced the tracks of a hundred people. The Sensei makes no comment: I suspect that, as a professional teacher, she is thinking that this will be a heuristic experience for me. So I weave an erratic path between the trees, feeling out the firmer footing left in the snow compacted by yesterday’s hordes. <div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivk-hiuV2EJNbfc0ufjW2jaA5fGuN9fIrh-MdTSrHbhEneNiGW9VMJMgyqqM0glOqp7LIRmyv4OEJBdSy6V-q5wMHNnL46Ka9Yw_UpH5ccSQPh7xgETuQ-DT-R8x_c1WQx8DrUoBVAc7W5lTk_IWxP32tcMq1ngX2W7tSTzHMUtCoEqiioxoDl3K5HRvY/s2000/pano-takatoriyama-above-trees-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1031" data-original-width="2000" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivk-hiuV2EJNbfc0ufjW2jaA5fGuN9fIrh-MdTSrHbhEneNiGW9VMJMgyqqM0glOqp7LIRmyv4OEJBdSy6V-q5wMHNnL46Ka9Yw_UpH5ccSQPh7xgETuQ-DT-R8x_c1WQx8DrUoBVAc7W5lTk_IWxP32tcMq1ngX2W7tSTzHMUtCoEqiioxoDl3K5HRvY/w400-h206/pano-takatoriyama-above-trees-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>That works, more or less, until we emerge from the shelter of the woods on the windward side of the ridge – in this treeless gap, the brisk northerly has piled the snow into fluted drifts and dunes, with knee-high scarp walls. Even with our snow shoes, we find ourselves wallowing as if through a gigantic cake of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mochi" target="_blank">mochi</a>. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifhyphenhyphenYl-3A-FHEMZ2JaUxkmgJrMUuuyDFTLQqyx3Npqyg-9SMPzPSQF0jFEa6yJcnKiwiBMH49aViGbKY6RvR1G0cxXd8cXWGPjCnC31ggwKrMaPtZebXVPK1x7pHEGL_psdG8QvIdLIg3rRVghfYuNVGqQHfOhRkUJcxQ-TNmXnJxGtW3ju0dnzpE6ByE/s2000/pano-toritate-drift2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="871" data-original-width="2000" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifhyphenhyphenYl-3A-FHEMZ2JaUxkmgJrMUuuyDFTLQqyx3Npqyg-9SMPzPSQF0jFEa6yJcnKiwiBMH49aViGbKY6RvR1G0cxXd8cXWGPjCnC31ggwKrMaPtZebXVPK1x7pHEGL_psdG8QvIdLIg3rRVghfYuNVGqQHfOhRkUJcxQ-TNmXnJxGtW3ju0dnzpE6ByE/w400-h174/pano-toritate-drift2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The local mountaineering term 猛ラッセル (<i>mō rasseru</i>) floats to mind, <i>mō</i> as in frenetic, <i>rasseru</i> as in the <a href="http://www.trainweb.org/wagplow/RussellHistory.html" target="_blank">Russell Car & Snow Plow Company</a>, incorporated in the state of Maine in 1893. As <a href="https://digital.hagley.org/08019208_russell_snow_1898" target="_blank">the firm's brochure</a> proudly stated, “Russell snow plows have now been most successfully used in all kinds of snow, both East and West … they should not be confounded with the many other kinds of snow plows that have proven more or less inefficient when hard work was to be done …”<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF0Hhk_9V9A3ODq2AI6FxJADKO9v7_Yxdn-J1oLrkp-5A_a2dtig8kY-811JqnRSoWWQkrNXuM9Z8NZYpESyVrHRrC4i_0jmkNchVLnsdX81tzK-ehx38TkdLMuEMY7tIqxiioVGWHZV8-rCcwuD7Hj81TdNRPgd0kAaG37KD-31biVsAaKpTD-U8c-Es/s542/Screenshot%202024-02-10%20at%2009.42.40.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="542" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF0Hhk_9V9A3ODq2AI6FxJADKO9v7_Yxdn-J1oLrkp-5A_a2dtig8kY-811JqnRSoWWQkrNXuM9Z8NZYpESyVrHRrC4i_0jmkNchVLnsdX81tzK-ehx38TkdLMuEMY7tIqxiioVGWHZV8-rCcwuD7Hj81TdNRPgd0kAaG37KD-31biVsAaKpTD-U8c-Es/w400-h328/Screenshot%202024-02-10%20at%2009.42.40.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Russelling the way it used to be<br />Image: courtesy of the Glenbough Archives</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Anxious not to be confounded as more or less inefficient when hard work is to be done, I russell my way frenetically onwards through the drifts. Yet my efforts seem to be all but nugatory. At this rate, we'll be lucky to make the summit at all – where are the three young guys behind us, I wonder. Their voices seem to have faded out. <div><br /></div><div>At least the work is keeping us warm; I’m already wearing everything I have, including the outer jacket reserved for high alpine weather. In Scotland, you’d call these “full conditions”; here in Hokuriku they’re just the default setting.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWV28aFoRPP6-0aDmtW6dq_eSOFZeGL2MTorZIKFGjBNk3Oye4u4tLiUWMgV2mi-sGmEzwXmcPTXT25uIMlPhzM2ArVBD3jQ6iP6SD1x-lOozoK3ryrLcStXdTOzlODDrhvbwH7mUCAxkUUd-mjr5rBfrQmnJUxwsj3FN5NbTPS7dVJgFoMtGCRG9j2ow/s1300/DSCN4138-toritate-near-summit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="1300" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWV28aFoRPP6-0aDmtW6dq_eSOFZeGL2MTorZIKFGjBNk3Oye4u4tLiUWMgV2mi-sGmEzwXmcPTXT25uIMlPhzM2ArVBD3jQ6iP6SD1x-lOozoK3ryrLcStXdTOzlODDrhvbwH7mUCAxkUUd-mjr5rBfrQmnJUxwsj3FN5NbTPS7dVJgFoMtGCRG9j2ow/w400-h241/DSCN4138-toritate-near-summit.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />After administering a heuristic dose of the mochi treatment, the mountain gives us a break. Higher up, the wind has blasted the snow into a firm crust, into which the steel teeth of our snowshoes bite eagerly. The summit is a snowy pate, open, treeless – we pay it the briefest of visits, as there is no view to admire. “Now all we have to do is follow our tracks home,” I’m tempted to say, but think better of it. <br /><br />In the car park, we meet the trio who had been following us up. One of them had started to get exposure – something to do with his jacket getting soaked through and then freezing – and had completely lost awareness. He was still looking a bit dazed, but his companions had managed to bring him down safely.</div><div><br /></div><div>What was it that the taxi driver on Adatara said about the winter mountains … ?<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPeZb9z1dDJVGZZHjVJYy-hw1mjwA6mjiTCH7tbBcGa57982AKvdXFD4NJNPDs751vdpeTcinCLEHNlsPMdLidKAzRwROyjve_LjJ75THk6XvMEWLB7UF2mmS7DqH8_MeVvGqSiS2QecTaeQSIwf1hYTPbqOBjYs0ragjx4cUsIkiA35_kcd2VRDSZcnE/s1300/DSCN4135-backlit-tree.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="975" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPeZb9z1dDJVGZZHjVJYy-hw1mjwA6mjiTCH7tbBcGa57982AKvdXFD4NJNPDs751vdpeTcinCLEHNlsPMdLidKAzRwROyjve_LjJ75THk6XvMEWLB7UF2mmS7DqH8_MeVvGqSiS2QecTaeQSIwf1hYTPbqOBjYs0ragjx4cUsIkiA35_kcd2VRDSZcnE/w480-h640/DSCN4135-backlit-tree.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div></div></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-90707349771443436162024-02-12T19:43:00.024+01:002024-02-15T10:24:40.469+01:00A meizanologist's diary (57)14 January: we are out of the house well before sunrise to attend the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagichō_Fire_Festival" target="_blank">Sagichō bonfire</a> (左義長), on which everybody in the neighbourhood burns up their New Year decorations. Like Three Kings’ Day or Epiphany in Europe, the Sagichō marks the end of the festive season, although with a bit of added gasoline to help along the stubbornly incombustible <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadomatsu" target="_blank">kadomatsu</a>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5O9vkQ12M9A2UvypZ2iE9ayNfADQxEvbo3I3-TNrxPASAqW1j0wGMr6kII73g28HWv40GMcWDM9bK3sMZuhc1BsWg89lywmdY55aR-FyxhdLtAKHnFHKsmzraRz6udqSeagXyNFy_rS9aoPq05sOfs7PG2xaG-FKag-hIe7hss72csApq2EuSmrXLWTQ/s1280/IMG_0438-sagicho-vert.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5O9vkQ12M9A2UvypZ2iE9ayNfADQxEvbo3I3-TNrxPASAqW1j0wGMr6kII73g28HWv40GMcWDM9bK3sMZuhc1BsWg89lywmdY55aR-FyxhdLtAKHnFHKsmzraRz6udqSeagXyNFy_rS9aoPq05sOfs7PG2xaG-FKag-hIe7hss72csApq2EuSmrXLWTQ/w480-h640/IMG_0438-sagicho-vert.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />Elsewhere in Japan, the custom may be known as a Dondoyaki (どんど焼き). But the Sensei’s hometown prefers (like the Sensei herself) to cleave to the forms of antiquity. According to a post by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshida_Kenkō" target="_blank">Monk Kenkō </a>(1283–1350) in his <i>Tsurezuregusa</i> blog (no 180), the mallets used at the Imperial Court’s New Year games were burned in just such a “Sagichō”. And if the term was good enough for Kenkō, then it’s good enough for us. <div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjTbyXSbEjdaNIAv3mlKVQjLOWXl0LKbxcDDb47Q7gzyJQ2RE-FBV3WHMS0zs4bS69r6bMw_a0Qpd4gBEpbRDS6UBqaWCHvUmyS5asKtK9gEPX5InN3Fl9ZJGy-FeUavzWf3hkun-fqqEB7KxLPtkoRu9Hglc5OJ88MBU1jlT6JZOPXV95Jfj0r3KBdI/s1280/IMG_0440-sagicho-wide.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjTbyXSbEjdaNIAv3mlKVQjLOWXl0LKbxcDDb47Q7gzyJQ2RE-FBV3WHMS0zs4bS69r6bMw_a0Qpd4gBEpbRDS6UBqaWCHvUmyS5asKtK9gEPX5InN3Fl9ZJGy-FeUavzWf3hkun-fqqEB7KxLPtkoRu9Hglc5OJ88MBU1jlT6JZOPXV95Jfj0r3KBdI/w400-h240/IMG_0440-sagicho-wide.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Nobody would accuse Kenkō of being an outdoor type yet, strange to say, his very next blog post is about snow: </div><div><i><br /></i></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The meaning of the word ‘koyuki’ in the song ‘Fure fure, koyuki, Tamba no koyuki” is ‘powder snow’, used because the snow falls like rice powder after pounding and husking … I wonder if this expression dates back to antiquity. The Emperor Toba, as a boy, used ‘koyuki’ to describe falling snow, as we know from the diary of the court lady Sanuki no Suke. </i>(Donald Keene's translation)</div></blockquote><div><br />Later in the morning, inspired more probably by our recent visit to the <a href="https://yukinokagakukan.kagashi-ss.com/profile/" target="_blank">Nakaya Ukichiro Museum of Snow and Ice</a> than by Kenkō, I stop off from emptying the kitchen bin to examine the precipitation that has fallen overnight in the garden. </div><div><br /></div><div>After all, Nakaya-sensei enjoins us to pay equal attention to all kinds of "letters from the sky". During his snow research on Tokachi-dake in Hokkaidō, he found that six-pointed flower-like crystals, which are commonly accepted as representative, comprise only a small part of natural snowfalls. </div><div><br /></div><div>Crystals with fewer axes and less regular shapes actually fall in greater quantities than the six-pointed kind, Nakaya found, but previous researchers tended to neglect them because such snowflakes were less photogenic. "I therefore made a general classification of snow crystals, always keeping in mind the necessity of attaching equal importance to every type of crystal observed in nature," he wrote. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia1NZeh9Yy1xcpqH7J3mRjZmajft4Ty3YmHdetUK3K8Gfbj6ta08N-Dddwmo8pDtUKRjYhmxPWeYvj5vNcuPraCRBzOKihpqRKyniiZaBhQALS6zpuQxfQVnveYoRpbwciTmcL8nVP0EMIHY5OXDv-tvAPmzyHm9b1ishAMfG1xn8LXiXfdTZoJF4xUNw/s1280/IMG_0453-graupel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia1NZeh9Yy1xcpqH7J3mRjZmajft4Ty3YmHdetUK3K8Gfbj6ta08N-Dddwmo8pDtUKRjYhmxPWeYvj5vNcuPraCRBzOKihpqRKyniiZaBhQALS6zpuQxfQVnveYoRpbwciTmcL8nVP0EMIHY5OXDv-tvAPmzyHm9b1ishAMfG1xn8LXiXfdTZoJF4xUNw/w480-h640/IMG_0453-graupel.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />Last night's cold front seems to have scattered miniature white pithballs all over the Sensei's backyard. Ironically, though, these offerings are nowhere to be seen in Nakaya's seminal chart of snow crystal types. This is probably because they are just “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel" target="_blank">graupel</a>”, a form of sleet, rather than genuine snow:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLvGlS5qm_RaSMnkCW9BG8rhIC9fdxcWfwt8Yi9V8HjRqNAg01TEKBlqaC5wFj58oZZBg0RSxTzlyK-CXqLK8YMz-JC6Ou1BTZk4A1G0RXLnKuRsu6bkuGMLW7sQgew2na52gOswjhgk_koMZ4mJW0j-LvqHlxo8u75aU5EUy_Bq09Tad1YNfUvQsL94w/s740/Nakaya-diagram.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="740" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLvGlS5qm_RaSMnkCW9BG8rhIC9fdxcWfwt8Yi9V8HjRqNAg01TEKBlqaC5wFj58oZZBg0RSxTzlyK-CXqLK8YMz-JC6Ou1BTZk4A1G0RXLnKuRsu6bkuGMLW7sQgew2na52gOswjhgk_koMZ4mJW0j-LvqHlxo8u75aU5EUy_Bq09Tad1YNfUvQsL94w/w400-h305/Nakaya-diagram.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br />But there's every reason to believe that Kenkō's <i>koyuki</i> was the real deal. Winters were surely colder in Emperor Toba's time. And so the lightest, most ethereally refined grades of powder snow could well have fallen as far south as the Imperial capital. Now if only those perfumed courtiers had taken time off from their New Year mallet games to invent a wider kind of ski….</div><div><br /> </div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-30483293387968040902024-02-09T09:07:00.009+01:002024-02-09T14:14:12.787+01:00A meizanologist's diary (56)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw3A10-dSSzJd-L7beb5MX86eswcrbZyiJ4Zy4HmewGNhO0Bli6R3QLdSJhusuqnx6yZdmACZBCpYswGVbpj_SNU6krIOmpn-LaLxrzzthCRqMxzMP9BJHqpPV2SqbCR8UbhkCJ-SvcEUTQC0YlCMmSLDGTS20ugK1RK-G5tBAOSxTuV9NQ_kPY4NfMMM/s1000/fuji-pm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="1000" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw3A10-dSSzJd-L7beb5MX86eswcrbZyiJ4Zy4HmewGNhO0Bli6R3QLdSJhusuqnx6yZdmACZBCpYswGVbpj_SNU6krIOmpn-LaLxrzzthCRqMxzMP9BJHqpPV2SqbCR8UbhkCJ-SvcEUTQC0YlCMmSLDGTS20ugK1RK-G5tBAOSxTuV9NQ_kPY4NfMMM/w400-h265/fuji-pm.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />12/13 January: many thanks to the station clerk who – after hearing me ask for a window seat on the Shinkansen’s right-hand side (“migi-gawa”) – intuits that I meant the opposite and books the seat accordingly. For, if you want a view of Fuji when heading into Tokyo on the Tōkaidō main line, it is a left-side seat that you’ll need.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRfnnT_09bm9SDWTxATVOGYv_bevnLj15mDraIg6PrgauRwzrKC63jNlhZ0HYcca3Bfmll1xxmtBrZGIo9eHEf6BSC1FNBU0p2NgE4s8jSRtmEACalnXlJp0CzUFwF2n4IHfDHXTruYMg040XooJXP7vbsPxti5ZIivMQlfligqEK-KRM3Si7GUk3LsmE/s2000/Fuji-roof-diptych.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="2000" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRfnnT_09bm9SDWTxATVOGYv_bevnLj15mDraIg6PrgauRwzrKC63jNlhZ0HYcca3Bfmll1xxmtBrZGIo9eHEf6BSC1FNBU0p2NgE4s8jSRtmEACalnXlJp0CzUFwF2n4IHfDHXTruYMg040XooJXP7vbsPxti5ZIivMQlfligqEK-KRM3Si7GUk3LsmE/w400-h151/Fuji-roof-diptych.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Mt Fuji shows up to best advantage on a clear winter day, just as it does now. But, wait a moment, what’s with the snow? In the old days, by this time of year, the mountain was more or less flawlessly white above the fifth station. <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXiAm2-a5BQcPLppaWIlWrEscNEX88GY2wf0mwCb5mAWd05EwMpsIVLokTxiXdYOPeBzgqQgWAyryj7IQRiIIrC60JGH8j3SsEmbVHZjge7IGCX3z1TLHUHyqh0iZfuafvh-jexhaeeS6WZtfL86RfL1EuD_tJaCH0IelPz0TY01A9XAhvpXt_epyS_Wo/s1000/solo-climber2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="685" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXiAm2-a5BQcPLppaWIlWrEscNEX88GY2wf0mwCb5mAWd05EwMpsIVLokTxiXdYOPeBzgqQgWAyryj7IQRiIIrC60JGH8j3SsEmbVHZjge7IGCX3z1TLHUHyqh0iZfuafvh-jexhaeeS6WZtfL86RfL1EuD_tJaCH0IelPz0TY01A9XAhvpXt_epyS_Wo/w438-h640/solo-climber2.jpg" width="438" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early winter high on Mt Fuji, c.1992</td></tr></tbody></table><br />But, right now, it looks as if you could walk up to the summit on dry ground if you picked your way carefully. Real winters are so last-century, it seems ….<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Gip4wJwFpz-Fp9fVuJCMNx_ANqjh6ffZfBSBKxEO7p4uTcYgjYGvLGzU9uMjNuih8Gb3Xz9CYPPyIL_DF-T4nMLHsza6msJgCsvHLkdhbqLHBv80VLNgpW6jO0gRCU60ihvVgBqzIWFgknawIaDvOdzVwmRlpobM1T1EsDWl6elFD1JQL6R8okcQRVc/s1000/mt%20fuji-bw.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="1000" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Gip4wJwFpz-Fp9fVuJCMNx_ANqjh6ffZfBSBKxEO7p4uTcYgjYGvLGzU9uMjNuih8Gb3Xz9CYPPyIL_DF-T4nMLHsza6msJgCsvHLkdhbqLHBv80VLNgpW6jO0gRCU60ihvVgBqzIWFgknawIaDvOdzVwmRlpobM1T1EsDWl6elFD1JQL6R8okcQRVc/w400-h239/mt%20fuji-bw.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-19912370868841007672024-01-31T19:17:00.002+01:002024-01-31T19:17:49.423+01:00A meizanologist's diary (55) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiywS3DSCD_M38QpMd2wgOPNHbWXubSY3VwiIdodoTxUo2UkQkdaCzmrmjqGaqdSqkr-YVLh5i896SKRA4xekBbSx-EZK813vSNLjNRYLttQxf0DlUJ45CF9Gb_2mPbW04btKRA0IPpcx9y4MQPHly8V36hO-HXrJsTzM1xOYe4eWRmAsZ9BmzURxGMzg0/s1080/IMG_0300-adatara%20poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiywS3DSCD_M38QpMd2wgOPNHbWXubSY3VwiIdodoTxUo2UkQkdaCzmrmjqGaqdSqkr-YVLh5i896SKRA4xekBbSx-EZK813vSNLjNRYLttQxf0DlUJ45CF9Gb_2mPbW04btKRA0IPpcx9y4MQPHly8V36hO-HXrJsTzM1xOYe4eWRmAsZ9BmzURxGMzg0/w480-h640/IMG_0300-adatara%20poster.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div>11 January: after an enjoyable evening soaking in the hot baths of the hospitable Mount Inn, I take the early bus back to Nihonmatsu station. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6z7vOqEl5KUhJHHj0AsoLXDQGVSUbP2P18YOcskZdB6nikrH273_ysY8ZvK8j3PmCvKx4du3S2syr_L-ASFh1wwcmu8sobyxwGlwfilEFTPHILT6LWlumU24OnTzzJKz0rpugmZbdalIRFmtf48LUE2w7zpmK-vc-aGXvOQ1B044A1im81fbDuHze0Vs/s1080/IMG_0303%20meisho%20annai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6z7vOqEl5KUhJHHj0AsoLXDQGVSUbP2P18YOcskZdB6nikrH273_ysY8ZvK8j3PmCvKx4du3S2syr_L-ASFh1wwcmu8sobyxwGlwfilEFTPHILT6LWlumU24OnTzzJKz0rpugmZbdalIRFmtf48LUE2w7zpmK-vc-aGXvOQ1B044A1im81fbDuHze0Vs/w400-h300/IMG_0303%20meisho%20annai.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />On the platform is a signboard advertising the town’s main attractions. Top of the list is yesterday’s summit, Adatara-yama. For good or ill, one has to admire the “Hyakumeizan effect” – the power of a book published fully sixty years ago to attract hordes of free-spending hikers and mountaineers to a <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2011/04/hyakumeizan-man.html" target="_blank">specific set</a> of one hundred mountains ….</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEfwW6-HGrQ6UgRI2VsgJQhcVVXTexugud4pLmhz06YWdtG6x2umz47ztMa8uSaePW5eqTsHCw5vZKgiR4lTGyKquAzBxwRdCluXuizpsWKy-kVWe-uS66mUMgtFcllZCr1555kTIkgeMihmmPTr3ZXeJy23ubkcVmtz-vZLNWeRHk82m257FQmv4fmfA/s1080/IMG_0301%20-%20adatara%20-%20station.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1080" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEfwW6-HGrQ6UgRI2VsgJQhcVVXTexugud4pLmhz06YWdtG6x2umz47ztMa8uSaePW5eqTsHCw5vZKgiR4lTGyKquAzBxwRdCluXuizpsWKy-kVWe-uS66mUMgtFcllZCr1555kTIkgeMihmmPTr3ZXeJy23ubkcVmtz-vZLNWeRHk82m257FQmv4fmfA/w400-h266/IMG_0301%20-%20adatara%20-%20station.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-82154308799149383602024-01-29T19:13:00.015+01:002024-01-31T09:27:57.514+01:00A meizanologist's diary (54)10 January: “The winter mountains are fearsome,” says the taxi driver as he wafts me up to the trailhead on Adatara-yama (1,700 metres), the twenty-first of Fukada Kyūya’s one hundred mountains. You know, it might almost be the mountain itself speaking. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcu84p3veL4jy2itOL04GWx7zfz2TfM_GvAGw-R7zF2KEaxXMIiZ1OnVRrk9J-H4WltDnl06kCDIhKmvcgZ8p1dhhHViR6hBXfcdu_vnmuGlHMQ3sFMbErmq54agRwjAeh67EQaFWw2uWqxA_SAQxwnbn-sLQsugwvmpYaHKIKp-hVCNqcrLIyy9iDkU0/s2000/pano-adatara-rotor-cloud-pm2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="909" data-original-width="2000" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcu84p3veL4jy2itOL04GWx7zfz2TfM_GvAGw-R7zF2KEaxXMIiZ1OnVRrk9J-H4WltDnl06kCDIhKmvcgZ8p1dhhHViR6hBXfcdu_vnmuGlHMQ3sFMbErmq54agRwjAeh67EQaFWw2uWqxA_SAQxwnbn-sLQsugwvmpYaHKIKp-hVCNqcrLIyy9iDkU0/w400-h181/pano-adatara-rotor-cloud-pm2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />When I arrived at Dake Onsen yesterday, spindrift was blowing this way and that over the frozen road, driving grey mists veiled the summit ridge and, downwind, a massive rotor cloud hovered over the valley like some alien spaceship. According to Yamap and the other online oracles, nobody had adventured themselves on the mountain that day.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0f5wa6XqCYM4nvGTtezf2byXQAiszcBwi0d3A5DlNZSrNpSGvbCypO-de0MNc4sO1f4QEYak3R1aBk_BZ2PqROjdexXhK8zi6eCXGtt6c12SGLdNfs7VR6IgbiZ4qnpk56K0prsS726Casxa4vQ8x4b32nBXcLwMEB3QLUgtZqrLKmI5HYqKkAlvVeq4/s1300/DSCN4034-tozan-todoke.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0f5wa6XqCYM4nvGTtezf2byXQAiszcBwi0d3A5DlNZSrNpSGvbCypO-de0MNc4sO1f4QEYak3R1aBk_BZ2PqROjdexXhK8zi6eCXGtt6c12SGLdNfs7VR6IgbiZ4qnpk56K0prsS726Casxa4vQ8x4b32nBXcLwMEB3QLUgtZqrLKmI5HYqKkAlvVeq4/w400-h300/DSCN4034-tozan-todoke.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />This morning looks friendlier, though – the wind has dropped and the ominous rotor cloud has vanished. The taxi driver drops me off at the ski piste above Dake Onsen, I fill in a <i>tozan-todoke </i>form to tell people where I’m going, and swing my pack onto my shoulders – it contains both crampons and snowshoes, as the Yamap respondents seem to have been using either or both in the last few days. So, with all types of footgear available, what could possibly go wrong…<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8oKIsH3_zZnfxlTKKkmri3tRGLemvNaBFeA8rjqkJajp7dal1d1YEocaG5dQtjmJqySKcqxI6gc2iqT_vm8IEOtGsCB4b3egDf2Do7K7Fi2evsvcZDDv8P5ayCMUNt4_KbKrhYVcJmoiJgOFvwF_htB7fRmGECkhFp6aMsJic4VcEPQuYzERuOwJmq3Y/s1300/DSCN4038-adatara-path.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="956" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8oKIsH3_zZnfxlTKKkmri3tRGLemvNaBFeA8rjqkJajp7dal1d1YEocaG5dQtjmJqySKcqxI6gc2iqT_vm8IEOtGsCB4b3egDf2Do7K7Fi2evsvcZDDv8P5ayCMUNt4_KbKrhYVcJmoiJgOFvwF_htB7fRmGECkhFp6aMsJic4VcEPQuYzERuOwJmq3Y/w470-h640/DSCN4038-adatara-path.jpg" width="470" /></a></div><br />The blue sky lasts until we get to the Kurogane Hut – I choose this route out of several alternatives, because the Hyakumeizan author started his ascent there. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVZWqSbHDFewgDSKfa8uZt6cjSzFHvubheNa32SzO9-123xbqRwJKtK1CpX5vKM6DDYuvExU9H1CTcljsEHdtpSHxpaeW-qyBvR5YdIbCiRrtGVM-DW0DMcRrcV423JgZ0eTzfVGr12no7Lui-8KtZMxdZQtlkLj7YL-3INt-E_SLcmAP1GeW6HVlb9r0/s1300/DSCN4044-kurogane-hut.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1092" data-original-width="1300" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVZWqSbHDFewgDSKfa8uZt6cjSzFHvubheNa32SzO9-123xbqRwJKtK1CpX5vKM6DDYuvExU9H1CTcljsEHdtpSHxpaeW-qyBvR5YdIbCiRrtGVM-DW0DMcRrcV423JgZ0eTzfVGr12no7Lui-8KtZMxdZQtlkLj7YL-3INt-E_SLcmAP1GeW6HVlb9r0/w400-h336/DSCN4044-kurogane-hut.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Taking a break to munch on one of the Sensei’s home-grown sweet potatoes, I realise that I’m embarrassed: I seem to have left the large-scale map of the mountain back in the hotel and there are no tracks to follow up ahead. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_vW66MkE5W_4wMqgH8U8M22_HPraJfDNSFVkQLDmLR3MWd1NhSd-Fs2qrM9M72G5Lza-wt_F17c11uv9ekNSrnLgk1TqZE32SCd-c5teTFV5lXvCiUpewubj5UKvxFmaWAGGwvdnZjKG3DVRo7mF2CsMTscV4_aFa3L03PyoOmHtydhsJTOjliriFS_c/s1300/DSCN4045-imo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_vW66MkE5W_4wMqgH8U8M22_HPraJfDNSFVkQLDmLR3MWd1NhSd-Fs2qrM9M72G5Lza-wt_F17c11uv9ekNSrnLgk1TqZE32SCd-c5teTFV5lXvCiUpewubj5UKvxFmaWAGGwvdnZjKG3DVRo7mF2CsMTscV4_aFa3L03PyoOmHtydhsJTOjliriFS_c/w400-h300/DSCN4045-imo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />A man working on the hut is able to point me in the right direction. After assailing what seems to be a blank snow slope, I <i>tsubo-ashi</i> my way into a stunted wood and start guessing at where the summer path might run by looking for the odd stretch of yellow guide rope and gaps between the trees. <br /><br />The footing alternates between deep pockets of powder snow in the hollows and jagged rafts of lava blown clear by yesterday’s wind. Fortunately, my ragged old gaiters – veterans of winter climbing in Japan thirty years ago – have enough moral fibre left to keep my boots dry. Wet feet should be avoided in these temperatures. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3PWX9jqFwvVWDqpTCLj4ERgYuPM25XQQEtS2OdXvpIYO367qO7yDOnL9sUKVV7_2oboCb7SC3MyXQfIZq7vq9JGtKmhlH0wKaec-ehgtjXlKL1oPVmdSP_ljm2K2FGfLQnMRpv3_LWXyUpd9bfTjv-BiB1mXXqZlWs_LsrGdjP9AkDjN6zKp70kwso8/s2000/pano-adatara-am-stone2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="2000" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3PWX9jqFwvVWDqpTCLj4ERgYuPM25XQQEtS2OdXvpIYO367qO7yDOnL9sUKVV7_2oboCb7SC3MyXQfIZq7vq9JGtKmhlH0wKaec-ehgtjXlKL1oPVmdSP_ljm2K2FGfLQnMRpv3_LWXyUpd9bfTjv-BiB1mXXqZlWs_LsrGdjP9AkDjN6zKp70kwso8/w400-h214/pano-adatara-am-stone2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Snowshoes go on to cross the deeply drifted lee slope across to Mine-no-tsuji. I pop up on this col just in time to catch a last glimpse of Adatara’s lava pinnacle opposite. Then it vanishes into driving clouds. A fox has made off with the fine morning. <br /><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr7keQ0yMTo67Rkywjc6sE31KGjkWAPgzCh4vB6ejcp4cJKjM4KIEJ_Hm-Z6iTg5vKrGA6Iv-ghMZ_kOpQT_qNuQOZgzczZzqE_RlpTm547QZYwFsmet-6pdD32F4kA5NWluvb8ZmPCp148HW1rrHy_ghKc3osYhOixOHSDu1o4iFzp1bZoCnkiWn8Gv0/s2000/pano-adatara-midslope-b2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1216" data-original-width="2000" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr7keQ0yMTo67Rkywjc6sE31KGjkWAPgzCh4vB6ejcp4cJKjM4KIEJ_Hm-Z6iTg5vKrGA6Iv-ghMZ_kOpQT_qNuQOZgzczZzqE_RlpTm547QZYwFsmet-6pdD32F4kA5NWluvb8ZmPCp148HW1rrHy_ghKc3osYhOixOHSDu1o4iFzp1bZoCnkiWn8Gv0/w400-h244/pano-adatara-midslope-b2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />But, no matter, some mountain wizard seems to have left a set of bootprints heading in the right direction and there is still the small-scale map. The footsteps lead up to a second col, which is furnished with a set of frozen-up signposts. <br /><br />This must be Ushi-no-se. In summer it may resemble an ox’s back, but right now it serves as an acceleration zone for a rambunctious northeasterly. In summer, the ground would be yellow, thanks to the volcano’s effusions; now it’s a sheet of wind-blasted snow crust. <br /><br />When the <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2011/04/hyakumeizan-man.html" target="_blank">Hyakumeizan author</a> passed this way, clouds prevented him seeing into the huge crater of Numa-no-daira below, but I am granted a quick glimpse before the mists close in. The vast declivity looks more like Greenland than Honshu at this moment. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaupxNDXY0TzMZZO0IKHzigRqrSDghdFntA_xTV0F3PPkkmGOQ8AZVXaUws17zGRcRZQN_yFITCfxhaRoO0aUvlYc3wlwBfYJ37WXow1WGdrN3TlWn310qey7IvugFQBtnMhVeBySwI3u-TulQetJDR2f1L_BphyphenhyphenCnKT1nN24hyZkC32iin2hdN0SR2k/s2000/pano-adatara-numadaira2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1089" data-original-width="2000" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaupxNDXY0TzMZZO0IKHzigRqrSDghdFntA_xTV0F3PPkkmGOQ8AZVXaUws17zGRcRZQN_yFITCfxhaRoO0aUvlYc3wlwBfYJ37WXow1WGdrN3TlWn310qey7IvugFQBtnMhVeBySwI3u-TulQetJDR2f1L_BphyphenhyphenCnKT1nN24hyZkC32iin2hdN0SR2k/w400-h217/pano-adatara-numadaira2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />“Snow crystals are letters from heaven,” wrote <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2024/01/4-january-we-visit-nakaya-ukichiro.html" target="_blank">Nakaya Ukichiro (1900-1962)</a>, the pioneer of snow science. Up here, the icy spicules sandblasting my face put their message more bluntly. Get out of the wind or be blast-frozen, they say. I drop below the ridgeline on the eastern side and start traversing across a flank of frozen prawns – ebi no shippo – which crumble into ice-dust under the snowshoes.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLDUS_bY9dtjscXkZfhuKKw9XUQJm1GNAhb3ugpsVSXHqwgE_WrgvYsz9bQudtNBYDunouBbKbzF1yx28zFw_g3bXhOqM1RPvmMvEEijEmEwUcYwaJ0rsRDT48EYixujMKO4dWjSErKCjm6U0k6afPDsR2h1Zk4vCFwp6QIdaZagC_tiC2dOE1E6se77I/s1300/DSCN4064-adatara-summit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLDUS_bY9dtjscXkZfhuKKw9XUQJm1GNAhb3ugpsVSXHqwgE_WrgvYsz9bQudtNBYDunouBbKbzF1yx28zFw_g3bXhOqM1RPvmMvEEijEmEwUcYwaJ0rsRDT48EYixujMKO4dWjSErKCjm6U0k6afPDsR2h1Zk4vCFwp6QIdaZagC_tiC2dOE1E6se77I/w400-h300/DSCN4064-adatara-summit.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The summit flits helpfully out of the racing cloud just as I start to wonder where it might be hiding. Sheltering behind a rock, I swap snowshoes for crampons. Perhaps not strictly necessary, but the spikes give extra assurance up a snowy passage protected by what appears to be a spare length of light-gauge lavatory chain. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1j_JpW61g2UC6qrWLr8pXqZB6LOpNn4-8lp4utox3hjL7-0Z_9F_sB6P5mqLt5Gv38N5-NaS_WIo8BlaxTjIiN0VpD6LMh5VFhuOkBBw0en8n_e0iJkRXURKnTGdIHKi7mhGvwdYIhYP2P9c0_Xu59hzobpAiGQCQ2d60_CUzp2bWMsMlsYWUNxyZEh4/s1300/DSCN4067-adatara-frost.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="981" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1j_JpW61g2UC6qrWLr8pXqZB6LOpNn4-8lp4utox3hjL7-0Z_9F_sB6P5mqLt5Gv38N5-NaS_WIo8BlaxTjIiN0VpD6LMh5VFhuOkBBw0en8n_e0iJkRXURKnTGdIHKi7mhGvwdYIhYP2P9c0_Xu59hzobpAiGQCQ2d60_CUzp2bWMsMlsYWUNxyZEh4/w482-h640/DSCN4067-adatara-frost.jpg" width="482" /></a></div><br />The summit visit is abbreviated – no time for a selfie. Then down a short ladder, half-buried in snow, back to the ridge – abseiling down the lavatory chain does not appeal. I follow tracks, not mine, back along the summit ridge. Then they vanish, leaving me once again embarrassed. Here is the frozen-up signpost at Ushi-no-se, but how to find the way to the next col in this murk?<br /><br />I try heading downhill in vaguely the right direction, but soon realise I’m uncertain of my position – in this whirling cloud, you could end up anywhere, and quite possibly in the winter-quarters of those “aggressive bears” that an English-language sign at the ski piste warned of. <br /><br />As for following a compass bearing, the obvious resort in such a situation, this would require the large-scale map that I left in the ryokan. Instead, I climb back to the ridge and find a strange-shaped rock that I remembered passing. And there, like a long-lost friend, is the track that the steel teeth of my snowshoes had left on the way up. Problem solved, sort of.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k3XW33mU79DUxzowa8dfmF26qQDGGoMTsMZS0Hk-gwOyUqE2lCUA1DStxjp-pZSfDnA7R4HDBIafXXdi3OGiMAniUYVRvcF1iM4SXy5ivhcQRv6yXoOr9haKL4d5FqzIWkQYLZzH-9_o9zroqKjh9_vxM3DhrJAmbNr0Byd7bHJtFseMlrXNshNd8cw/s1300/DSCN4068-adatara-roundel-stone.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="811" data-original-width="1300" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k3XW33mU79DUxzowa8dfmF26qQDGGoMTsMZS0Hk-gwOyUqE2lCUA1DStxjp-pZSfDnA7R4HDBIafXXdi3OGiMAniUYVRvcF1iM4SXy5ivhcQRv6yXoOr9haKL4d5FqzIWkQYLZzH-9_o9zroqKjh9_vxM3DhrJAmbNr0Byd7bHJtFseMlrXNshNd8cw/w400-h250/DSCN4068-adatara-roundel-stone.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />At Mine-no-Tsuji, the wind has obliterated all the morning’s tracks. But a line of exposed rocks with painted circles guides me off the ridge. Below the cloud and wind, a snowy path materialises, which leads away through a wind-stunted wood. <br /><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpZx_mKXNO4LqninCQjB4eF1SoboOkz-goEgIodZ0gYaP-eQgKYG46nds2hbY3wuWQgE84HCvQEK8nOeboTLw3exu5Jp8YjXJCmzEHH31r7faa93B8cUsGHxsfmdt-5A6pGG8Jy6xAMS7yGiPb8o0jaT5proTL7JnVSY53bZrWLTmCzBRgVyuVSwdpyag/s1300/DSCN4069-adatara-akanuno.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpZx_mKXNO4LqninCQjB4eF1SoboOkz-goEgIodZ0gYaP-eQgKYG46nds2hbY3wuWQgE84HCvQEK8nOeboTLw3exu5Jp8YjXJCmzEHH31r7faa93B8cUsGHxsfmdt-5A6pGG8Jy6xAMS7yGiPb8o0jaT5proTL7JnVSY53bZrWLTmCzBRgVyuVSwdpyag/w400-h300/DSCN4069-adatara-akanuno.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Ahead, the rotor cloud has warped out of hyperspace again, hanging low in the sky over Nihonmatsu like an alien starship. Yet now, at least, it’s showing me the way off the mountain. </div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJcE3PYYxSuSkQfDFJ-Rv4usSWzkqU_JIVuzg4Xs6HDZHP1W3aUvUxJSXeKKpHrKiqRkBZsVoYHyw5C09fuPtJ0up0RaSIC4Le0U9OAwn8wiyq8Nlx01YkH5hV2I2M0AUg_5RZizS05URGjlYjuv16OP3uxwm9GQvpW5MmNR_fwyEVcm89MNpaxMpHbrs/s1300/pano-adatara-bar-cloud2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1095" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJcE3PYYxSuSkQfDFJ-Rv4usSWzkqU_JIVuzg4Xs6HDZHP1W3aUvUxJSXeKKpHrKiqRkBZsVoYHyw5C09fuPtJ0up0RaSIC4Le0U9OAwn8wiyq8Nlx01YkH5hV2I2M0AUg_5RZizS05URGjlYjuv16OP3uxwm9GQvpW5MmNR_fwyEVcm89MNpaxMpHbrs/w540-h640/pano-adatara-bar-cloud2.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-47564109260554167892024-01-26T16:31:00.008+01:002024-01-30T09:17:23.240+01:00A meizanologist's diary (53)5 January: the Sensei decides that our winter mountaineering season will open on Takekurabe-yama, a local eminence. We crunch across the hard-frozen snow of a dam parapet and start off up a gully, zig-zagging higher on a sketchy path. Soon we start hearing the chop-chop of Chinooks and other heavy helicopters as they fly north on missions to the Noto Peninsula. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDe3jPrI6iyuuS5sVTOYCbUlMlZEmiqcrRMXOn7tZU7LgAlvXQteArpo-rAPqMT3uUz1KxVnzfRuiXr2TOX0Iz2yxbIvQfCn5-6cg-M6G3XFj444I_asXxTz2xpw1affNpmFcbpgajEIHFzasouMIdkUK8ZW75ta2K5Jmu-U7ydjSQiMLeWeAfwSyKcqA/s1300/DSCN3982-takekurabe-wood.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="975" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDe3jPrI6iyuuS5sVTOYCbUlMlZEmiqcrRMXOn7tZU7LgAlvXQteArpo-rAPqMT3uUz1KxVnzfRuiXr2TOX0Iz2yxbIvQfCn5-6cg-M6G3XFj444I_asXxTz2xpw1affNpmFcbpgajEIHFzasouMIdkUK8ZW75ta2K5Jmu-U7ydjSQiMLeWeAfwSyKcqA/w480-h640/DSCN3982-takekurabe-wood.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />A wooded ridge leads up to a snowpatch that suckers us into putting on snowshoes. We soon have to take them off again, as most of the snow has melted on the south-facing slopes where the path now takes us. When the snow starts again, I keep my snowshoes off as I am following a series of fresh bootprints. <br /><br />Unlike this mountain wizard (仙人), as I think of him, I keep sinking into the snow, whether because I am heavier, or because the wizard passed by when the snow was still frozen. Either way, we are in post-holing purgatory: the operative word is “tsubo-ashi”. The Sensei even has to caution me about my language. <br /><br />By the time that we resort to snow shoes again, my boots are awash with melting snow. Too late, I think of the gaiters riding in the bottom of my pack. <div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BVn70eenVJs9fxRvdP_VH8pTlFIA1Txw4HX2I30sxSGh2wNhgT06oKaZvpb1HfHRPSoCR-CxAtGDp34rtncdhv6brNAV1lSJWOnsnj_NkU6s9V2wdLBKc7YaiOMfXR0jAtneVKjzyCoeYsEHiqWplnGdIhPTai9RRby_g-MGi9N8lXPcFmS8Eauz6HI/s1300/pano-takekurabe2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="1300" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BVn70eenVJs9fxRvdP_VH8pTlFIA1Txw4HX2I30sxSGh2wNhgT06oKaZvpb1HfHRPSoCR-CxAtGDp34rtncdhv6brNAV1lSJWOnsnj_NkU6s9V2wdLBKc7YaiOMfXR0jAtneVKjzyCoeYsEHiqWplnGdIhPTai9RRby_g-MGi9N8lXPcFmS8Eauz6HI/w400-h209/pano-takekurabe2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />We pull up on the north summit of Takekurabe (964.3 metres) somewhat after noon. Just as we do so, the mountain wizard comes up from the opposite direction – skimming over the snow, he is on his way back from the mountain’s south summit. </div><div><br /></div><div>Annoyingly, the south summit overtops ours by just over eighty metres. It also sports a hut, although some apparently have murmured that no such refuge should desecrate a summit already dedicated to a shrine of Hakusan Sansho Daigongen. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM0Rbvy2Ig3uo4dKhmHLDzd4C3U5oulKa3XqF2Xlzcn7I4N8EZa_HuijUGzX7Q0zCI1ommUaON-6uFGdp2ZUBBwLVEMkrGFTB5UyWnMcYpl56ADKpvZS0RqkvzR-8E8NHzijIi2aUxsl7m2WAsxf3AXG9jmIVubpdq4LygQn60z8AqRM8rwbm_PdDrt0I/s1300/DSCN4006-takekurabe-s-summit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="827" data-original-width="1300" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM0Rbvy2Ig3uo4dKhmHLDzd4C3U5oulKa3XqF2Xlzcn7I4N8EZa_HuijUGzX7Q0zCI1ommUaON-6uFGdp2ZUBBwLVEMkrGFTB5UyWnMcYpl56ADKpvZS0RqkvzR-8E8NHzijIi2aUxsl7m2WAsxf3AXG9jmIVubpdq4LygQn60z8AqRM8rwbm_PdDrt0I/w400-h255/DSCN4006-takekurabe-s-summit.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />We gaze over the intervening gap at the south summit and estimate that it would take us another hour or so to get over there and come back. The westering sun reminds us that winter days are short. By the time we decide to go down, the wizard has vanished. We find ourselves walking – or in my case squelching - back over the dam not long before dusk. How did such a lowly mountain take us so long?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv1pJape2J0WaNpVEGR44o9NoQy0yp3HeDBfpLxOX6dW3oxMSu6_ZrevuhD7auSYVgPLRtKPHK8c8Lk4jqKz814GJfeSJal2fMNs7SpnOONY9wLNps6I1MCusd6TzHr0H85QMapgBKwAIkMxUZ2gsS7gmwlU6IsREaLhs07_ko6-ei0zz62XFvs_nuIHY/s2000/pano-takekurabe-descent2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="943" data-original-width="2000" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv1pJape2J0WaNpVEGR44o9NoQy0yp3HeDBfpLxOX6dW3oxMSu6_ZrevuhD7auSYVgPLRtKPHK8c8Lk4jqKz814GJfeSJal2fMNs7SpnOONY9wLNps6I1MCusd6TzHr0H85QMapgBKwAIkMxUZ2gsS7gmwlU6IsREaLhs07_ko6-ei0zz62XFvs_nuIHY/w400-h189/pano-takekurabe-descent2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />In his book on 150 Fukui mountains – why stop at a hidebound one hundred? – Masunaga Michio says that folks like to infer from “Take-kurabe” (“height-measure”) that each of the twin peaks vies with the other to be the highest. This is a common enough theme in mountain mythology. Today, though, I felt that it was my sense of snow conditions that was measured. And, let’s admit it, found a bit wanting.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio_FFkxdK_oZsOGkuBKAf_Z-HzOis0XKzwdr5i4oxtY844S1HUmTCwxBcGP56JfF5CakbX4eqW3dz8fCFGWTaEBSzZScYaZ_6OWydkjOuTmAvJQ2A5ggKr8CJ4aNXZKHJ5SOO9d_7Z8c_sWKvhwW9ni79Codnvsa1CgOhCsroRXJL9BayQfonj0s5C39I/s2000/pano-hakusan-vert2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1393" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio_FFkxdK_oZsOGkuBKAf_Z-HzOis0XKzwdr5i4oxtY844S1HUmTCwxBcGP56JfF5CakbX4eqW3dz8fCFGWTaEBSzZScYaZ_6OWydkjOuTmAvJQ2A5ggKr8CJ4aNXZKHJ5SOO9d_7Z8c_sWKvhwW9ni79Codnvsa1CgOhCsroRXJL9BayQfonj0s5C39I/w446-h640/pano-hakusan-vert2.jpg" width="446" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hakusan from Takekurabe-yama</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-41286613749879347202024-01-25T08:56:00.006+01:002024-01-25T08:59:40.042+01:00A meizanologist's diary (52)4 January (continued): walking back to the Sensei’s car from <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2024/01/4-january-we-visit-nakaya-ukichiro.html" target="_blank">the museum</a>, we find ourselves wondering whether the many long cracks in the tarmac are recent or not. But only briefly. When we light upon a drain shaft that appears to have been thrust bodily out of the ground, the matter is settled.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd8hm9hVmJYXmY5z5DZ2EispNyf3ySr8RjMi_ArM7LU3L8BWsAJUDlky0qJRMNpWS4S7rRIBEebG2NjhnwQqm5kE7VdCeLTxHRDd3tpBk6MNRu_r9LLpH-TWa1Z09-MDrqUV8Oap3Fbiu1qXpoLZnMGKs_FpMLTkrAGGXDE66d_ceH-r4Opst_0fvnrlQ/s1080/IMG_0267%203-drainhole.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd8hm9hVmJYXmY5z5DZ2EispNyf3ySr8RjMi_ArM7LU3L8BWsAJUDlky0qJRMNpWS4S7rRIBEebG2NjhnwQqm5kE7VdCeLTxHRDd3tpBk6MNRu_r9LLpH-TWa1Z09-MDrqUV8Oap3Fbiu1qXpoLZnMGKs_FpMLTkrAGGXDE66d_ceH-r4Opst_0fvnrlQ/w480-h640/IMG_0267%203-drainhole.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />To find out more, I walk back to the museum’s office. Yes, confirms the curator, all this happened during the initial earthquake shock on New Year’s Day – the museum building, being constructed to the latest standards, rode out the shock undamaged, but the grounds around it liquified – water gushed out of the ground – cracking pavements and breaking up the carpark. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Gg8xnvrTuvTvcyI58UR0kLgpu5SgZm46EfGiAWj-wJ6GlHadT79HYdGODGhhmT2XmAi0GN5XG54d38tuMXEqB1gbgTsReVAwQKVrOeUlLJGj9AEezvVmgh_v3TqXipuRa4HXzjrDQnxHPsNLQ0k0B2QHT2jujVdfHGPnUhN0zq59gJmgp2vbfxravDA/s1080/IMG_0271-paving.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Gg8xnvrTuvTvcyI58UR0kLgpu5SgZm46EfGiAWj-wJ6GlHadT79HYdGODGhhmT2XmAi0GN5XG54d38tuMXEqB1gbgTsReVAwQKVrOeUlLJGj9AEezvVmgh_v3TqXipuRa4HXzjrDQnxHPsNLQ0k0B2QHT2jujVdfHGPnUhN0zq59gJmgp2vbfxravDA/w400-h300/IMG_0271-paving.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The curator invites me on a quick tour. Liquefaction was responsible for the damage to the stone staircase, which is why we had to enter the museum through the ground-level door. It also caused a mudslide that blocked a stream flowing into the nearby lagoon – it was mainly the waterlogged soil within a narrow zone close to the lagoon that was prone to liquefaction. A backhoe digger had to brought in to clear the channel before the stream overflowed its banks.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHzKTE1Dxi20nwBlDz-3PZICeKmfSMaEdyQ0IcnHn6PQcYUCnCAuUjjCEfr61XLVHe9Jv0r31ebAvRzS_k8VkH1-ta-xvVwpx4cbKcgLnp5uVFHH8mq-4w0dR_vIijHsT63BwYiu4mvJNSOEc3kBJF9vK7qujm8MP4yHT99-jjIZfFIQceP3I_pzrXmkg/s1080/IMG_0268-paving.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHzKTE1Dxi20nwBlDz-3PZICeKmfSMaEdyQ0IcnHn6PQcYUCnCAuUjjCEfr61XLVHe9Jv0r31ebAvRzS_k8VkH1-ta-xvVwpx4cbKcgLnp5uVFHH8mq-4w0dR_vIijHsT63BwYiu4mvJNSOEc3kBJF9vK7qujm8MP4yHT99-jjIZfFIQceP3I_pzrXmkg/w400-h300/IMG_0268-paving.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Thanking the curator, I walk back to the car. Its navigation system would reckon that Kaga City, the museum’s location, is about 160 kilometres or 100 miles south of the earthquake’s epicentre. <br /><br />The energies let loose under the Noto Peninsula three days ago are unimaginable – they heaved up coastlines metres above their former level, so that small ports turned into sandy beaches. And perhaps, with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Noto_earthquake" target="_blank">earthquakes like this one</a> summing over millennia, they may have shifted the whole top of the peninsula sideways. As for the human cost …<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBKZGj9u0Eab-_oAK4MyrC1Lwjm2GQ7Ui7urInUAokB_YI-evolGDpQjti4lTYiXZiXooJogVRGvRP5ADIqaTlAiMFTr_4IvqXmb1WGRH40VUoKVNQrgSr7zia4t5jlwfnQF-JHTGuZgpoTWR_LX2S3f0UMI5DSLi9UIS5HPqwzGe_DsWs2jjZ9jOfV4/s784/Screenshot%202024-01-25%20at%2008.53.44.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="784" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBKZGj9u0Eab-_oAK4MyrC1Lwjm2GQ7Ui7urInUAokB_YI-evolGDpQjti4lTYiXZiXooJogVRGvRP5ADIqaTlAiMFTr_4IvqXmb1WGRH40VUoKVNQrgSr7zia4t5jlwfnQF-JHTGuZgpoTWR_LX2S3f0UMI5DSLi9UIS5HPqwzGe_DsWs2jjZ9jOfV4/w400-h204/Screenshot%202024-01-25%20at%2008.53.44.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Source: Wikipedia)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Echoing through my mind are the words of Terada Torahiko, founder of Tokyo University’s earthquake research institute: “Shouldn’t you be amazed by this?” Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-67113097760800241372024-01-22T20:59:00.017+01:002024-01-24T20:19:14.258+01:00A meizanologist's diary (51)4 January: we visit the <a href="https://yukinokagakukan.kagashi-ss.com" target="_blank">Nakaya Ukichiro Museum of Snow and Ice</a> in Kaga City. Up here, just inside Ishikawa’s prefectural border, the rice fields are lightly dusted in white. Snow was Nakaya’s core business; he is best known for cataloguing its crystal types and establishing a classification system that paved the way for <a href="https://www.storyofsnow.com/blog1.php/how-to-classify-snow-crystals" target="_blank">the ones in worldwide use today</a>. <br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs6NlXlBummENJDmfo5pSOIOuBdnSSu0-ErswLTDsvlEOjz4USAycENuQTU-hv4NwcSpvptjMIUXEhBN5qstypLz3n7rDnZTCQuAMrfVG4FNsye2jHlFUdH3hhOOAXunhx0s9YdZnJjzBOAMAkJ4FZPA83cZmpvKQvjiUKe0XXFjkEE6mCd1kgExIAP6A/s2462/IMG_0219-nakaya.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2462" data-original-width="2413" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs6NlXlBummENJDmfo5pSOIOuBdnSSu0-ErswLTDsvlEOjz4USAycENuQTU-hv4NwcSpvptjMIUXEhBN5qstypLz3n7rDnZTCQuAMrfVG4FNsye2jHlFUdH3hhOOAXunhx0s9YdZnJjzBOAMAkJ4FZPA83cZmpvKQvjiUKe0XXFjkEE6mCd1kgExIAP6A/w196-h200/IMG_0219-nakaya.jpg" width="196" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nakaya Ukichiro researching<br />snow in the Tokachi region</td></tr></tbody></table>We are lucky to find the museum open at all – the stone steps leading up to the usual entrance have been roped off. So we find our way in via the museum office instead. The main exhibition hall presents a timeline of Nakaya’s life – born in Kaga in 1900, attended the elite Kanazawa Fourth High School, went up to Tokyo University in 1922 to study physics …<br /><br />In retrospect, it might seem obvious that a bright young physicist from Japan’s snow country would devote his scholarly life to the white stuff. But real life is less straightforward. In his second year at Tokyo University, the year of the Great Kanto Earthquake, Nakaya came under the mentorship of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torahiko_Terada" target="_blank">Terada Torahiko</a> of RIKEN, whose scientific watchword was “Aren’t you amazed by this?” (fushigi da to wa omoimasen ka?)<br /><br /><div>Terada would strongly influence the way that Nakaya went about his investigations. As the latter recalled:<br /><br /></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Terada considered a ‘physics of form’, concerning which he frequently said ‘If the forms of the phenomena are the same, they are governed by the same laws. To pass over the similarity of forms as merely a superficial agreement is to act as a person who doesn’t understand the true meaning of the word ‘form’. Terada’s words have a very deep meaning, for he not only meditated on the idea but he did actual research into the forms that appeared in various phenomena: his research into fractures, electric sparks, sparklers and the flow of charcoal calligraphy ink all shared the underlying theme of research into forms.</i></div></blockquote><div><br />After the great earthquake of September 1923, an event that probably altered Japan’s political evolution, Terada would go on to found Tokyo University’s Earthquake Research Institute, with Nakaya's help. But it was a smaller-scale disaster that shifted the younger man's trajectory. When an airship of the Imperial Navy exploded in mid-air in March 1924, Terada asked his student to help him find out why. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEi28Mqcjss5ZtyVOpnGKzdvp_Sr6auqpoKaewLhsZVYz9nTAO6EOoynmSGcYIwzcHVYXX13OD7xX44Nw8Zov5INRaOvCZUIBYT75UsjAm6TmTBfU-wlp_0VdPd4qE77yvga-ZWsIbyt8OKaGKNSw9K7xqCuaoPpHV8E-VxhBtXdTNcUePVYpj8BlLreE/s1080/IMG_0241%20-%20spark%20photos.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="723" data-original-width="1080" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEi28Mqcjss5ZtyVOpnGKzdvp_Sr6auqpoKaewLhsZVYz9nTAO6EOoynmSGcYIwzcHVYXX13OD7xX44Nw8Zov5INRaOvCZUIBYT75UsjAm6TmTBfU-wlp_0VdPd4qE77yvga-ZWsIbyt8OKaGKNSw9K7xqCuaoPpHV8E-VxhBtXdTNcUePVYpj8BlLreE/w400-h268/IMG_0241%20-%20spark%20photos.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photos of electrical sparking by Nakaya Ukichiro</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The scientists concluded that an electrostatic discharge had ignited the airship’s gasbags, which led Nakaya to a study of electrical sparking. Via graduate studies at London University, where he studied x-rays, this work took him to an assistant professorship at Hokkaido University. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg2Q2BB2J3xlx3bYlGfHOxHrlXCLO_PvVjeRB70EVwnwbTzGQn73jJhF1KZNWRcxlbaPLIGrwPge0C15UTA5uwkDOSkXu7CLy_4ZDuorFFXTTYDHPEL4sX35s3mAmI0qO4lvTM66a50lhupO51PHq2VBym4rMUhq7n4lObrjU4VtBsC81f_ZLdsyWx3Qo/s1304/IMG_0254%20-%20in%20snow%20laboratory.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1304" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg2Q2BB2J3xlx3bYlGfHOxHrlXCLO_PvVjeRB70EVwnwbTzGQn73jJhF1KZNWRcxlbaPLIGrwPge0C15UTA5uwkDOSkXu7CLy_4ZDuorFFXTTYDHPEL4sX35s3mAmI0qO4lvTM66a50lhupO51PHq2VBym4rMUhq7n4lObrjU4VtBsC81f_ZLdsyWx3Qo/w530-h640/IMG_0254%20-%20in%20snow%20laboratory.jpg" width="530" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Researching snow in Hokkaido</td></tr></tbody></table><br />According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukichiro_Nakaya" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>, the Sapporo-based university was short on funds and experimental equipment. Snow, on the other hand, was available in unlimited quantities. The 3,000 snowflake photos published by Wilson Bentley (1865-1931) were a further inspiration to Nakaya, who had built up his own expertise in micro-photography while recording electrical sparks. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi54WQzQXYec5SXC7h1gamzMIVlQD5USqDa8YufFC9KXJDJLOxlBi9cj4OJPBcHJG-B8TptYfDtqGx_SJk4fwNrYXbdcMCBwq6bv5y6nLn93u2rRbpgY0CmEzP2Ys22vSWyMomWH94gaKbZUMa-OmjLWQ7gJzKezZLlxSiVa0sTpC7lQr7dqwFQJvuzXWA/s1080/IMG_0255%20-%20tokachi%20hut.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="1080" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi54WQzQXYec5SXC7h1gamzMIVlQD5USqDa8YufFC9KXJDJLOxlBi9cj4OJPBcHJG-B8TptYfDtqGx_SJk4fwNrYXbdcMCBwq6bv5y6nLn93u2rRbpgY0CmEzP2Ys22vSWyMomWH94gaKbZUMa-OmjLWQ7gJzKezZLlxSiVa0sTpC7lQr7dqwFQJvuzXWA/w400-h297/IMG_0255%20-%20tokachi%20hut.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mountain lodge where Nakaya photographed snowflakes</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Having found his metier, Nakaya went out into the Hokkaido mountains to study and record snow crystals. After documenting their forms in some 3,000 macro photos, he then sought to reproduce the way that snowflakes form, ultimately persuading the world’s first artificial snow crystals to form on a rabbit’s hair. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZWvC2LvBoFwIRKEjKiiY5o6ne1bfyhfSoLM0wHLW2_et0g8B51EaETZ_HqdgnAXgGVrRsr2ZqTgipeHJw7EeCJ8On1RprCrRphQpn_DYXDdJvdxQvOWBGrnCiCygB4JY-4WebUx7iswHxuvNbtvI6iyfO1dximpc1Xne6XcO9eAt4sjle6iz0KPvQr2c/s1790/IMG_0225-supercooled.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1790" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZWvC2LvBoFwIRKEjKiiY5o6ne1bfyhfSoLM0wHLW2_et0g8B51EaETZ_HqdgnAXgGVrRsr2ZqTgipeHJw7EeCJ8On1RprCrRphQpn_DYXDdJvdxQvOWBGrnCiCygB4JY-4WebUx7iswHxuvNbtvI6iyfO1dximpc1Xne6XcO9eAt4sjle6iz0KPvQr2c/w386-h640/IMG_0225-supercooled.jpg" width="386" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Supercooled water freezes instantly </td></tr></tbody></table><br />At this point, a museum attendant rounds us up for a live demonstration of supercooled water. We breathe into a freezer cabinet to see how “<a href="https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/en/diamond-dust.html" target="_blank">diamond dust</a>” forms and watch how a bottle of supercooled water freezes almost instantly when shaken – just as supercooled cloud droplets freeze solid when they hit the wings of a plane.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy8t6mfJQtsWCfKrgqUUnOWuOR1OTPyTkFT703iIyS2yohHBVDvyk2YdLBKlr2rMBl81rt0iP8dYhhRNwxC-t3FrODp4laZ65yO5hNHAz39ASYE953qJKrp0OWGq4Jss92Uwj0PWY0vivs-WNCRmoLPv9LvHT3ppHbW2YPFdjs2CoZxL_y5tsZc6f3-BE/s1080/IMG_0233-airframe%20at%20Niseko.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1080" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy8t6mfJQtsWCfKrgqUUnOWuOR1OTPyTkFT703iIyS2yohHBVDvyk2YdLBKlr2rMBl81rt0iP8dYhhRNwxC-t3FrODp4laZ65yO5hNHAz39ASYE953qJKrp0OWGq4Jss92Uwj0PWY0vivs-WNCRmoLPv9LvHT3ppHbW2YPFdjs2CoZxL_y5tsZc6f3-BE/w400-h254/IMG_0233-airframe%20at%20Niseko.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Airframe for icing experiments at Niseko, 1943</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The same insights inspired Nakaya’s research during the war years. A superannuated military aircraft – some say a Zero fighter – was dragged up to the top of a mountain near Niseko in 1943 and left to accumulate ice in the freezing winter winds. Nakaya also experimented with artificial fog dissipation. Sooner or later, scientific theory would always yield up practical applications, he believed.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlR9yjOvzrND4mxt0rz3oHpmLlzaORSLM_FbA66MtnlkdEuAJa9XvIGW3lOTZL5hyfLVGG6g4YQFA1Vl0tOR1UtZmyRKJNXzZ8dX4SmonRh5Lzjp_OmRbBy5NzuBVA-oqZsVBqo82SBF0oRX-ffqLCh5WbiRvLS563IuCCeHbhVUtMojxwNwlhdc0qbeA/s1080/IMG_0238-painting.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="1080" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlR9yjOvzrND4mxt0rz3oHpmLlzaORSLM_FbA66MtnlkdEuAJa9XvIGW3lOTZL5hyfLVGG6g4YQFA1Vl0tOR1UtZmyRKJNXzZ8dX4SmonRh5Lzjp_OmRbBy5NzuBVA-oqZsVBqo82SBF0oRX-ffqLCh5WbiRvLS563IuCCeHbhVUtMojxwNwlhdc0qbeA/w400-h301/IMG_0238-painting.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A landscape by Nakaya Ukichiro<br />painted while convalescing in the Izu Peninsula</td></tr></tbody></table><br />There was more to Nakaya than snow science. We had already admired some of his paintings – Terada-sensei encouraged his students to draw and paint as a way of honing their observational skills – and on our way out, we noticed the cover of a children’s book that Nakaya wrote and published for his two daughters. For the literary arts too were part of his philosophy:<br /><br /></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I am not knowledgeable about modern methods of specialised education. However, reflecting on my own childhood experiences, I suspect that perhaps an outwardly unscientific education may have an unexpected effect of enhancing feelings of wonder about nature. The dreams of childhood may be unrestrained and nonsensical, but I would advise against suppressing such dreams too quickly. Children who do not know about sea monsters (umibōzu) and river demons (kappa) are unfortunate. Not only are they unfortunate, but they may also be deprived of a true scientific education if the umibōzu and kappa are expelled too soon from their worlds.</i></div></blockquote><p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ0F5XiIDEooiY_ebPkFLSuMjLnYpXwVuFk__GZISLkM5wQYZPdfKZvpvkc9ZkC7wCBDAavocYj_J2dP3nZQyOPG8Mh2TQBbAG2eGcz2IFNaTI-FbYtMyoe1I8vtYMrpBHSb0bqnYU3-4AwUJKYiyGa0vl0mPXyHSx9k1b5bZYHOBRSvwhgQ5ktqcTcXs/s1080/IMG_0232-at%20home%20Tokyo.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="803" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ0F5XiIDEooiY_ebPkFLSuMjLnYpXwVuFk__GZISLkM5wQYZPdfKZvpvkc9ZkC7wCBDAavocYj_J2dP3nZQyOPG8Mh2TQBbAG2eGcz2IFNaTI-FbYtMyoe1I8vtYMrpBHSb0bqnYU3-4AwUJKYiyGa0vl0mPXyHSx9k1b5bZYHOBRSvwhgQ5ktqcTcXs/w476-h640/IMG_0232-at%20home%20Tokyo.jpg" width="476" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Nakaya family at home in Tokyo, 1930s</td></tr></tbody></table><p> Appropriately, the museum's next live demonstration appeals as much to the imagination as the intellect. We watch as a museum staffer takes a fresh block of ice out of a handy freezer cabinet, shines a bright light on it, and shows us how melt cavities form inside the ice, almost like snowflakes in reverse. Named for John Tyndall, the Victorian scientist and alpinist, the <a href="http://lakeice.squarespace.com/tyndall-figures/" target="_blank">phenomenon</a> was further investigated by Nakaya in the 1950s. </p><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHU16RzujxvKMNAkHZUivET6jkCvH3Juy-9bYHKGjlnJFHlQwjQj4w-UGE3hDwfYp-a7slClUiFRfTrWzY1ocijEiFyhYGuOfAgK-U7EHK9ODVKhDz-YXKIQdD_TwbnSq9XsMT72m2e0wgnUSNkLJgEvXW0N7s8uFPK_Gv9XVb0DuTRNvwfka_C_YV6M/s1080/IMG_0244%20-%20demo%20tyndall%20figure.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="725" data-original-width="1080" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHU16RzujxvKMNAkHZUivET6jkCvH3Juy-9bYHKGjlnJFHlQwjQj4w-UGE3hDwfYp-a7slClUiFRfTrWzY1ocijEiFyhYGuOfAgK-U7EHK9ODVKhDz-YXKIQdD_TwbnSq9XsMT72m2e0wgnUSNkLJgEvXW0N7s8uFPK_Gv9XVb0DuTRNvwfka_C_YV6M/w400-h269/IMG_0244%20-%20demo%20tyndall%20figure.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Demonstrating how Tyndall figures form</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdJuUAjXhmnDskmUpIGcif5rcAq6tm4kFW1Ss0CqvO3JTxUTD1wIOGPQ1CdmrJjgubeyFHfOM2JbZlIKfg_WpIndDVSA0ECU__gq_EJ2KggqgkMSyRTJygFV4eZiwbqRdQy6qhs-Cv7nHWrOsPGIxjxGni_HAG_DnlvkCD7E5k1oF_8Im2YoLWfCIz5s/s1080/IMG_0247%20-%20tyndall%20figure.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdJuUAjXhmnDskmUpIGcif5rcAq6tm4kFW1Ss0CqvO3JTxUTD1wIOGPQ1CdmrJjgubeyFHfOM2JbZlIKfg_WpIndDVSA0ECU__gq_EJ2KggqgkMSyRTJygFV4eZiwbqRdQy6qhs-Cv7nHWrOsPGIxjxGni_HAG_DnlvkCD7E5k1oF_8Im2YoLWfCIz5s/w480-h640/IMG_0247%20-%20tyndall%20figure.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Like negative snowflakes, Tyndall figures appear in an ice-block </td></tr></tbody></table><br />By this time, he was attached to the US Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) in Illinois. Among other projects there, he studied how snow can be milled to make surfaces hard enough for roads and runways. Under the auspices of SIPRE, he also visited the Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska and Thule in Greenland, where he researched the crystalline structure of glacier ice:<br /><br /></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>After a two-year study of single crystals of ice, I came to the conclusion that can be summed up in one sentence: ice is a metal.</i></div></blockquote><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dUgERDXMtbbVa4XN2eH03OHRZ3W2wBJTLjlkZDGt7NJOG5nf-yinaG0DV15MTU7444iX1A4zGJEr7qprZMFxWxTU9smguGk-UC1E_2K7Ev6p-3wxX_yQAb9bPcLXzS1SDIJrfo0-eD5-PJXJoQbcMs4CjroGTZEAzBClVxDCAgReDYg0Lr9NHqihIYY/s1080/IMG_0243%20-%20Nakaya%20in%20Greenland.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dUgERDXMtbbVa4XN2eH03OHRZ3W2wBJTLjlkZDGt7NJOG5nf-yinaG0DV15MTU7444iX1A4zGJEr7qprZMFxWxTU9smguGk-UC1E_2K7Ev6p-3wxX_yQAb9bPcLXzS1SDIJrfo0-eD5-PJXJoQbcMs4CjroGTZEAzBClVxDCAgReDYg0Lr9NHqihIYY/w400-h300/IMG_0243%20-%20Nakaya%20in%20Greenland.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nakaya at an ice laboratory in Greenland</td></tr></tbody></table><br />From 1957 onwards, Nakaya spent four summers at Site-2, a research station located 400 kilometres inland on the Greenland ice sheet, taking part in early attempts to bring up ice cores for climatic research. Increasingly he was thinking about how ice and snow fitted into a bigger picture:<br /><br /></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Because of the global increase in atmospheric temperature since the beginning of the 20th century, glaciers in many places worldwide are shrinking or retreating. The cause is an increase in CO2 due to the automobile-dominated society and the cutting down of forests. Warming of the climate will melt the ice in Antarctica and Greenland leading to a sea-level rise, and lowlands all over the world will be in danger of being submerged.</i></div></blockquote><div><br />Such insights are familiar today, but Nakaya published these words in 1957. The aim of his research now was to understand how the global water cycle – how snow turns to ice in glaciers and so returns to water – interacts with the climate. But time was running short. <br /><br />Ultimately, Nakaya’s fascination with Greenland was the death of him. Before his last trip to Thule, he refused to visit a doctor, knowing that a check-up would reveal health issues that would prevent him travelling. He returned to Tokyo exhausted by the journey, and died in April 1962. <br /><br />In a sense, it was inevitable that Nakaya's life’s work would remain unfinished. For, as he himself said, “No amount of investigation into a block of ice could reveal all its myriad secrets.”</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyNhO2m3cUNzm9khk94J7Hufy7eUyXhyrtcB4AgP60Z7eAf_wcpEVa-fapRK1BTKiBX6EhmiIRmMEB7isYGSvTIFgY8R28Y-gw5ny9XanlfI5XrKFxvtTsNE-gtCJcvLvbFeUsD-EhN27AUBsMROnC84jCODqZi6Ijjpw50rd8xqW1_xn8KLXXrMNYIBw/s1947/nakaya%20classification%201954%20copy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1177" data-original-width="1947" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyNhO2m3cUNzm9khk94J7Hufy7eUyXhyrtcB4AgP60Z7eAf_wcpEVa-fapRK1BTKiBX6EhmiIRmMEB7isYGSvTIFgY8R28Y-gw5ny9XanlfI5XrKFxvtTsNE-gtCJcvLvbFeUsD-EhN27AUBsMROnC84jCODqZi6Ijjpw50rd8xqW1_xn8KLXXrMNYIBw/w400-h241/nakaya%20classification%201954%20copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-52098236866763860842024-01-21T19:46:00.010+01:002024-01-24T10:19:19.815+01:00A meizanologist's diary (50)<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsHmDGakRCeM2TSl2HCFV8H0XZnCINsk6jyy3k9FwANBf_W-R5Gyuh8648R3LLQdtMHMXYZd28gNI6vobDq9GyJBUnr_oF_uDbA0JP3nc6LjEjKyk5Cv_UXiJNURoeg5y0vhyphenhyphen48478zZeMj2ZaBbGP1myg4F7JsFcRh0b7e1unnJDDDchz5ogAvkejdk/s1300/DSCN3962-han-climbing-monju.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="956" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsHmDGakRCeM2TSl2HCFV8H0XZnCINsk6jyy3k9FwANBf_W-R5Gyuh8648R3LLQdtMHMXYZd28gNI6vobDq9GyJBUnr_oF_uDbA0JP3nc6LjEjKyk5Cv_UXiJNURoeg5y0vhyphenhyphen48478zZeMj2ZaBbGP1myg4F7JsFcRh0b7e1unnJDDDchz5ogAvkejdk/w470-h640/DSCN3962-han-climbing-monju.jpg" width="470" /></a></div><br />2 January: Monju (365 metres), <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-meizanologists-diary-12.html" target="_blank">an eminence south of the city,</a> is a convivial place on the second day of the year. Citizens of all ages, from toddlers to pensioners, converge on the summit shrine for their first visit (hatsu-mode) of the year. <br /><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ0CSqedC3qzPAp3s4RpJnOUyaNucvF-g1s7CN0EXqApAYthWj7RuKERvcPE8TzHtkEtYdqzxz_CPSAeF2pMw2XlNOWfsD23BH4inWSX57txZHtkn4mNYVX1rFRwTHO-FgwcE2BXCYMtLqx_7AsT5ZlyUAeAoCKwHKQ4XgUXSyPmCmR66UJUdQg8ELQaQ/s1300/DSCN3965-monju-oyako.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="947" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ0CSqedC3qzPAp3s4RpJnOUyaNucvF-g1s7CN0EXqApAYthWj7RuKERvcPE8TzHtkEtYdqzxz_CPSAeF2pMw2XlNOWfsD23BH4inWSX57txZHtkn4mNYVX1rFRwTHO-FgwcE2BXCYMtLqx_7AsT5ZlyUAeAoCKwHKQ4XgUXSyPmCmR66UJUdQg8ELQaQ/w466-h640/DSCN3965-monju-oyako.jpg" width="466" /></a></div><br />A friend tells us that the venerable <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2015/11/meizan-spring-autumn-4.html" target="_blank">Masunaga Michio</a>, doyen of the local mountaineering scene and author of <i>Fukui no yama 150 </i>(One Hundred and Fifty Mountains of Fukui), has preceded us to the summit by at least an hour. By the time we arrive, the shrine priest has already run out of dragon talismans.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr0MqYgdvMBJnOczu7munFxJ9hVQDMaFemu5AMFKKNkJ_xLwesTPjkpseQR25-_lDgsMSwKYL-3kFCZ3pyfgnQ8KmYHvw0PBcZtDuzOKZ3DT9wcydvTvcE-oVDutC5IouspDcoKVJcy83aZUqLFj8CvMQRdijpOqNHO_QCEHSWENrjEMp0e0vtm_ZwPyw/s1300/DSCN3960-dragon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="1300" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr0MqYgdvMBJnOczu7munFxJ9hVQDMaFemu5AMFKKNkJ_xLwesTPjkpseQR25-_lDgsMSwKYL-3kFCZ3pyfgnQ8KmYHvw0PBcZtDuzOKZ3DT9wcydvTvcE-oVDutC5IouspDcoKVJcy83aZUqLFj8CvMQRdijpOqNHO_QCEHSWENrjEMp0e0vtm_ZwPyw/w400-h260/DSCN3960-dragon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Monju makes up for its modest altitude by a wealth of cultural associations. A votive tablet by the shrine doors records that the sanctuary was rebuilt after a typhoon with the help of a donation from an adept of Shugendō, the old syncretic mountain religion. What this says about the success of the Meiji-era efforts to disentwine Buddhism and Shintō - and extinguish Shugendō - may need further research …</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA_FQw_nuHBJQ0Eip2AFVwW8Axsk_VGL1sOjZHAt1fY2We88mYIRTMd4f17Cjgl4ihJ3gJNIdRcBiOIbAo_zyE_E0yn7_Ie4EeAG01OufGqHxKIImYXGYlQOjoZzbMJ8RdxJ7AnrjnQ_f04oQjretixhyphenhyphenzOaEL4CQZcRre9Xjl5cecl5mWJeu6jzWNgoE/s1300/DSCN3967-shrine.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="1300" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA_FQw_nuHBJQ0Eip2AFVwW8Axsk_VGL1sOjZHAt1fY2We88mYIRTMd4f17Cjgl4ihJ3gJNIdRcBiOIbAo_zyE_E0yn7_Ie4EeAG01OufGqHxKIImYXGYlQOjoZzbMJ8RdxJ7AnrjnQ_f04oQjretixhyphenhyphenzOaEL4CQZcRre9Xjl5cecl5mWJeu6jzWNgoE/w400-h245/DSCN3967-shrine.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY6jEuvFaDyseI9jmdgQsjQzyo8Pna0So8uL7UEUyV3zVR_VQoh0rUn53I8wnxmXiJqC_u-xlnjRCyNmQNGiF45tJnAM_TTRi9ylMgVzc0ZNC-yfsBH70NwZHy1keLb8NdAzHDxXQ1ehJO4XCMIP5x6pd61Hr8Iwzs8KTofuQ3fS_VkFwBCkrahHh_wHw/s1300/DSCN3968-good-fortune-fukuro.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="921" data-original-width="1300" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY6jEuvFaDyseI9jmdgQsjQzyo8Pna0So8uL7UEUyV3zVR_VQoh0rUn53I8wnxmXiJqC_u-xlnjRCyNmQNGiF45tJnAM_TTRi9ylMgVzc0ZNC-yfsBH70NwZHy1keLb8NdAzHDxXQ1ehJO4XCMIP5x6pd61Hr8Iwzs8KTofuQ3fS_VkFwBCkrahHh_wHw/w400-h284/DSCN3968-good-fortune-fukuro.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />In the evening, we’re watching TV when a conflagration is reported live from Tokyo’s Haneda airport. An incoming JAL Airbus has collided with a Coastguard plane loaded with supplies for the earthquake victims. The scale of the Noto disaster is only starting to filter through on the news channels. </div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-65601343830499763852024-01-20T16:15:00.004+01:002024-01-23T08:26:09.580+01:00A meizanologist's diary (49)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXMhg69hebK_rAKPFUiyMMXoNsuRG8Vad4Rr1QkpK4EP4KQH1Y-4Uhd9cklGMWQY8ukE0_wgtsVmcihxy-Tj4Zn1Wcf13dsyQ6kGEDHcnEOvrUwE2Z95I_ETMqt5VtDf4vabL_WXhkjRFZ-Lz5-6p5vVfa7GMsP6QILZq2ltjtipkE7IVdV8QTI7kiXFU/s1080/IMG_0194-dawn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXMhg69hebK_rAKPFUiyMMXoNsuRG8Vad4Rr1QkpK4EP4KQH1Y-4Uhd9cklGMWQY8ukE0_wgtsVmcihxy-Tj4Zn1Wcf13dsyQ6kGEDHcnEOvrUwE2Z95I_ETMqt5VtDf4vabL_WXhkjRFZ-Lz5-6p5vVfa7GMsP6QILZq2ltjtipkE7IVdV8QTI7kiXFU/w400-h300/IMG_0194-dawn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />1 January: Somewhere over central Asia, on another flight from HEL, the New Year’s sunrise touches off a haiku:<br /><br />機内から<br />あけぼのを見て<br />元日や<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdrzt17czmSgoA7-W_3gSdjUqyrY6p6VtG-m1Pn3kMsI4A5xLIhk8QrsYzfUHAGGnqx_evJ0kHHQarEsKPEMNvTouRveekFOVljbWLPfQFVdHkK2PbyNiKSr22pbDWlYu2dnHtO-h_LRZt27pjzwxEhbDMaeKXMCa4Ye9eE-Driu02m9eX1e3r1TWGO6c/s1080/IMG_0200-dragon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdrzt17czmSgoA7-W_3gSdjUqyrY6p6VtG-m1Pn3kMsI4A5xLIhk8QrsYzfUHAGGnqx_evJ0kHHQarEsKPEMNvTouRveekFOVljbWLPfQFVdHkK2PbyNiKSr22pbDWlYu2dnHtO-h_LRZt27pjzwxEhbDMaeKXMCa4Ye9eE-Driu02m9eX1e3r1TWGO6c/w400-h300/IMG_0200-dragon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Appropriately, a dragon-shaped cloud writhes its way underneath the Airbus as we fly towards Beijing. Then another couple of hours to KIX. The long journey from Europe ends smoothly when the Hokuriku line limited express pulls into Fukui station, on schedule at 16.06 pm. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKX-967nZtNxQKdDzzbJo-dPw8Ng3UPFXdlX4-gsuvvsEeA7MTw2Mgn67s6j9a9FETfLV_3XM5_doG9T9L2x3r9xqbMgIpdfAtr_qzX5muL69LWjgy2lAiTJuIgNUtw3Slp-xB75UE5kqXGmEwZRpJxy6MvIe5DtJFEWiu3iqIQN_lE58xFPaNg3uMuqU/s1080/IMG_0211-shadow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="1080" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKX-967nZtNxQKdDzzbJo-dPw8Ng3UPFXdlX4-gsuvvsEeA7MTw2Mgn67s6j9a9FETfLV_3XM5_doG9T9L2x3r9xqbMgIpdfAtr_qzX5muL69LWjgy2lAiTJuIgNUtw3Slp-xB75UE5kqXGmEwZRpJxy6MvIe5DtJFEWiu3iqIQN_lE58xFPaNg3uMuqU/w400-h255/IMG_0211-shadow.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Four minutes later, I’m looking for the Sensei and her car in the station forecourt when the earth shifts underfoot. The bus shelter I’m standing under wags to and fro with an audible creaking, while the reflections on the glazed frontage of a nearby building ripple as if in a breeze. Nobody seems alarmed but I decide to stay under the bus shelter until the shaking stops, just in case those glass panels start coming adrift. <br /><br />The Sensei and I find each other. Her Toyota has just announced to her that an earthquake is in progress. It repeats itself a few minutes later when we are stopped in traffic. The warning is otiose; we can feel the car swaying.<br /><br />Meanwhile, on the radio, the NHK announcer urges anybody near the coast to escape (“nigete!”) to higher ground – tidal waves up to five metres high could be rolling in near the quake’s epicentre, up in the Noto Peninsula.<br /><br />By the time we get home, it’s clear that any tidal waves won’t be on the scale of those that devastated the Tōhoku region in March 2011. But what about the damage wrought by the earthquake itself? At this point, we have no idea …Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-72597131218443698322023-12-23T14:17:00.005+01:002023-12-23T18:43:38.892+01:00A Christmas story<b>Not even trench warfare could dampen their sense of humour: a climbing story by C F Holland from the winter of 1915 …</b><br /><br />After marching about a farmyard in a snowstorm most of the night, guarding sundry articles, mainly broken spades, I had retired to the guard-room and was endeavouring to make myself comfortable on a bed of ammunition boxes. Alas! the goddess of sleep, discouraged by the hard circumstances, fled from me. By chance, I observed a magazine lying near, and on opening same was charmed to find a climbing story among its contents. Speedily I was engrossed in its thrilling episodes and entranced by the vistas opened up of new climbing possibilities. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0WgjIcqi6_2g_eLnkCNB29OVd0xWQUXqxY7FbY3R753CcD9x3kqiCT0OCAgB5LUXfBw7Xd_NxddvXIkL8tnXI8aodSoOfw3GgoBNQoLdaDZoPpKFwTCLmrXBypJYKlVXm5wiXpuoV7dAhw7PxxntsQp9JBDrnOIj0ZnyUXk3aBgM7vc8-YK14-iUtDY/s3712/IMG_0128-platz.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2652" data-original-width="3712" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0WgjIcqi6_2g_eLnkCNB29OVd0xWQUXqxY7FbY3R753CcD9x3kqiCT0OCAgB5LUXfBw7Xd_NxddvXIkL8tnXI8aodSoOfw3GgoBNQoLdaDZoPpKFwTCLmrXBypJYKlVXm5wiXpuoV7dAhw7PxxntsQp9JBDrnOIj0ZnyUXk3aBgM7vc8-YK14-iUtDY/w400-h286/IMG_0128-platz.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />It really was a most wonderful tale and may be summarized as follows. (May I say that I have tried to make this summary as veracious as possible and have erred rather on the side of understatement than the reverse). The party consisted of five, led by a Swiss guide named Fritz who spoke English with any amount of local colour, and was completed by two men and two girls; the scene being laid in the Rockies. <div><br /></div><div>Swiftly are we plunged “in medias res.” They are “doing rock work,” and are attached to a rope, twelve feet between each couple, they are descending and come to a steep slab, as I took it to be, with a profound precipice beneath. There are no holds. What to do? Obvious solution of difficulty - to slide. The guide slides, the hero slides, they all slide, the guide first because he is leading, the heroine last because she is the weak member of the party; but according to the illustration she is attached to a rope fore and aft, so that the suggestion occurs to me that they may have roped down this obviously difficult place without knowing it. Horrors! She slides badly and is just going over the edge when the hero seizes her, by the leg, and she is saved. Strange to say though, she is annoyed because she considers the hero too masterful. <br /><br />However, after a few words they proceed. Thrill follows thrill, the rope behaves badly and makes at one point a most dastardly attempt to belay the leader, but with great presence of mind and at great personal risk the heroine removes it and another danger is averted. But worse is to follow; the rope, evidently annoyed at being thwarted, gives all its attention to doing the heroine in. A second time it is foiled, this time by the hero, who again seizes the heroine, by the leg, who is thus saved from being thrown over another precipice by the now thoroughly infuriated rope. <br /><br />We breathe again, but it is a cunning as well as a determined rope and alters its tactics. This time it saws itself against a convenient rock and breaks between the heroine and the person above her with the awful result that the portion of the party above her proceeds in blissful ignorance of this fact and eventually reaches the top of the mountain before the broken rope trailing behind is discovered, while hero and heroine are left an embarrassed couple, so embarrassed in fact that the idea of shouting does not seem to have occurred to them (a weak point in an otherwise convincing narrative). <br /><br />I mentioned that the lady was previously a bit fed up with the hero, and now a trial of willpower ensues. She refuses to be led and repeatedly tries to advance but is as often foiled by her companion who seizes her each time, by the leg, and pulls her back. In the end he leads, but the result is hardly satisfactory as after overcoming countless difficulties, such as crossing a slope of shale just above the usual fathomless abyss, and dodging several avalanches, an unclimbable slab appears. No real attempt is made to climb it but no holds can be found, and the hero, upset by an incessant stream of sarcastic comments from the girl, breaks down and weeps. The scene is an affecting one “I wish I could die to save you,” sobs he, and she weeps too, whereupon he calls her his darling and they embrace. “I wish I could die too” cries she , a wish which seems likely to be gratified. However, mutual endearments follow, apparently for several hours. <br /><br />“But” says the author, “do they die?” Sly dog, he knew all the time. No! is the joyful answer. At this point I paused and indulged a while in contemplation, wondering how the author would extricate them from their perilous position. Perchance some great airman would fling them a rope and drag them to safety, the hero holding the rope in his teeth and the heroine in his arms; or an avalanche falling upwards might take them over the mauvais pas. <br /><br />But the solution proved commonplace. Suddenly a cheery face peers over the top of the impossible slab, it is the face of Fritz, the Swiss guide. He points out to them “invisible crevices in the rock by means of which they may climb up.” This they do, and reach the top of the mountain. And so this remarkable tale draws to a triumphant and happy conclusion with their marriage on safely getting to the bottom again.<br /><br /><b>References</b><br /><br />Text was originally published by C F Holland as “Another climbing story: a MS from ‘Somewhere in France’” in <i>The Journal of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club of the English Lake District</i>, War Issue, vol 3, no 2, November 1915 – this issue is also of interest to <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2016/07/definition-of-terms.html" target="_blank">meizanologists</a> as it contains a report on “Two climbs in the Japanese Alps” by the Rev. Walter Weston, MA, FRGS, AC. <br /><br />The image is from an illustration (for an advertisement, detail) by Ernst Platz in <i>Bergsteigermaler: Ernst Platz </i>by Maike Trentin-Mayer, published by the Deutscher Alpenverein, Bruckmann, 1997. <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <span style="font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit;"></span></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-79464691074084975882023-12-21T20:54:00.006+01:002023-12-23T08:54:15.591+01:00A meizanologist's diary (48)2 November: as there is the flight back to HEL this evening, we can afford only a short walk. Monju should fit the bill: it has just one metre of altitude for each day in the year. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ui9xSJZwzTwaEOUXlIq9Yxl3SsJDLY-tNTdTHuJuz6oEbj-ZMv7K2DKL9jYxS_-nXuZKzxVcMVoyo7j2jKI7Lc1I8h1B24cH6XajRvmGbkxAvOl9uyuPnNL9B0IM0c-uzYFujCzHbLpd1iSl6bD4vcxdGfqdN6baDdHRNaSw10Mfs4QgouWWpgmAOEM/s1600/IMG_3238-han-on-monju.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ui9xSJZwzTwaEOUXlIq9Yxl3SsJDLY-tNTdTHuJuz6oEbj-ZMv7K2DKL9jYxS_-nXuZKzxVcMVoyo7j2jKI7Lc1I8h1B24cH6XajRvmGbkxAvOl9uyuPnNL9B0IM0c-uzYFujCzHbLpd1iSl6bD4vcxdGfqdN6baDdHRNaSw10Mfs4QgouWWpgmAOEM/w480-h640/IMG_3238-han-on-monju.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />Ascending this miniature Meizan <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-meizanologists-diary-12.html" target="_blank">by its northern flank</a>, you pass by places such as Murodō and Ōnanji, names that echo those on the sacred mountains of Tateyama and Hakusan. But today we dispense with this cultural baggage by taking the west ridge. From a layby at the end of the road, a muddy runnel leads up into the woods. <br /><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD5fjAbotDKMgwLOnztHoEz9ROprXRMNwC523Roib3bNXYAPG35JRvatzXHE7ljI07cWwBGl4ZAigsXnn2HEkNcErAPMT_BYPFIqU8BqiX4whuOBiOOT2Uq71nY3-LU8Cf-l68K_loQgkpQamVi2quQOaUcpmasNn8nugHgEayyUmGF29uoNKmw0GqfQ8/s1600/IMG_3243-oku-no-in-sign.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD5fjAbotDKMgwLOnztHoEz9ROprXRMNwC523Roib3bNXYAPG35JRvatzXHE7ljI07cWwBGl4ZAigsXnn2HEkNcErAPMT_BYPFIqU8BqiX4whuOBiOOT2Uq71nY3-LU8Cf-l68K_loQgkpQamVi2quQOaUcpmasNn8nugHgEayyUmGF29uoNKmw0GqfQ8/w400-h300/IMG_3243-oku-no-in-sign.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />No shrines or jizō statues are met with until we reach the Oku-no-in (“Inner sanctuary”). Here a gigantic split boulder goes by the name of Tainai, like the famous <a href="https://www.gov-online.go.jp/eng/publicity/book/hlj/html/201309/201309_01_en.html" target="_blank">lava caves at the foot of Mt Fuji</a>.<br /><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfIoJgTg2drJ9_WClSTTIX4izBXCdh85cReaB4zgU1mT-hl0chtk1yzh842AZODJe7H5jd8VuTTXVp29t-0DFJ9SHLqWWfVzkHV6KgL3moaFqPw_4oWMx3z2H-YSBJOqStmaFu7_X0qGgLyCQpw7LYD8g81X-MeSw3hIPo8P2sRAH1zAG25kCrEvQ20T8/s1600/IMG_3245-tainai.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfIoJgTg2drJ9_WClSTTIX4izBXCdh85cReaB4zgU1mT-hl0chtk1yzh842AZODJe7H5jd8VuTTXVp29t-0DFJ9SHLqWWfVzkHV6KgL3moaFqPw_4oWMx3z2H-YSBJOqStmaFu7_X0qGgLyCQpw7LYD8g81X-MeSw3hIPo8P2sRAH1zAG25kCrEvQ20T8/w400-h300/IMG_3245-tainai.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Leaving the Sensei to take a rest, I step over a col to the summit shrine. The wooden fane has been magnificently rebuilt, after a typhoon shoved it bodily from its foundations a few years ago.<br /><br /></div><div>A new signboard promotes Monju's connection with the Hyakumeizan story – it records that<a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2011/04/hyakumeizan-man.html" target="_blank"> Fukada Kyūya</a>, then in his fourth year at Fukui Middle School, came up here with three companions in November 1919 and inscribed their names inside the shrine. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlkMUiNUcQRGzvkKEbPS5JZWTG3j_FXyIu0A-kPMeZ_v7EbOc1aRmGWtdJuSPbDTWvjQvBrAmC8fRxuumhwJyya2d-bKuTbSrp0jxSNja_8gywFxMdiFLWZkMmBBo_L5H0zCfyR0nYVaQ8v8xg9FP5VZWpZemlAgzEmbSC9u07_bBxlJYKFjY5ut6wqHw/s2000/IMG_3250-shirine-fukada.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlkMUiNUcQRGzvkKEbPS5JZWTG3j_FXyIu0A-kPMeZ_v7EbOc1aRmGWtdJuSPbDTWvjQvBrAmC8fRxuumhwJyya2d-bKuTbSrp0jxSNja_8gywFxMdiFLWZkMmBBo_L5H0zCfyR0nYVaQ8v8xg9FP5VZWpZemlAgzEmbSC9u07_bBxlJYKFjY5ut6wqHw/w400-h300/IMG_3250-shirine-fukada.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />How exactly these graffiti have been preserved is unclear – are they still in situ inside the shrine’s doors, or have they been taken down to some archive or museum? I’d like to take a closer look, but people keep coming up to pay their respects to the shrine.<br /><br />Another signboard attracts my attention, this one revealing a darker side to Monju’s history. Meizan or not, the mountain served as a fortress during the Warring Country period, to either defend or subjugate the people below, depending on your viewpoint.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJYHzMuoCA0k099oaJBsUi99pLVPJu2UX3xRLLjFoKHIFzgGeMDGgkCbyyuW7SQfYSi7KIa6VfBBW5SWui_97XWGeqde0I1CtDuvMDVRswnkO-Bv0CQSk71uL0GQri0wT8gmgJASvB_TJdGigFbvo7dCM8UdJmoN-bOlqobMh0MKzxGCZNIPHCKeClMKI/s2000/IMG_3252-monju-fortifications.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJYHzMuoCA0k099oaJBsUi99pLVPJu2UX3xRLLjFoKHIFzgGeMDGgkCbyyuW7SQfYSi7KIa6VfBBW5SWui_97XWGeqde0I1CtDuvMDVRswnkO-Bv0CQSk71uL0GQri0wT8gmgJASvB_TJdGigFbvo7dCM8UdJmoN-bOlqobMh0MKzxGCZNIPHCKeClMKI/w400-h300/IMG_3252-monju-fortifications.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>As an army veteran himself, the Hyakumeizan author had no illusions about the military usefulness of mountains. After he has expatiated on the medicinal herbs of Ibuki (1,377 metres), for example, the summit view prompts these thoughts:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><i>The plain looked so peaceful, yet it was precisely there, in the Genki and Tenshō eras (1570-1592), that the most bloody battles had taken place. Right in front of my eyes lay the killing fields of Shizu-ga-dake, Anegawa, and Sekigahara. Looking at the little hills spread out below, I could imagine how the generals of old found this ideal terrain on which to practice their deadly stratagems. </i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Well, it was probably naïve to have overlooked the strategic potential of this well-placed Meizan, I tell myself as I aim my phone camera at the signboard. In peace time, we tend to forget that mountains have other uses besides hiking, climbing and collecting herbs.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq9U7eQjWaaOZmo5_Cj-KazlQCNx9paDJNnKNz3AtJZ-wKD2_3cKQiexrpQCSc3oiMgsVcb7iBno3XS1U2fhmVV4igvPor95UB2YOmRyhmJPmYol86xYu6RjQaV1mxNCivF7Di7nmNZz5aiQAtMZCm5HAusm6aHkcLZBZ_GgK-ExPCBpfsAUlLcXcAuCU/s1600/IMG_3257-dragonfly.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1081" data-original-width="1600" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq9U7eQjWaaOZmo5_Cj-KazlQCNx9paDJNnKNz3AtJZ-wKD2_3cKQiexrpQCSc3oiMgsVcb7iBno3XS1U2fhmVV4igvPor95UB2YOmRyhmJPmYol86xYu6RjQaV1mxNCivF7Di7nmNZz5aiQAtMZCm5HAusm6aHkcLZBZ_GgK-ExPCBpfsAUlLcXcAuCU/w400-h270/IMG_3257-dragonfly.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Just then, atop the sign’s supporting post, I notice a dragonfly basking in the sun. The strangest thing, though – did it just wink at me ... ?</div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-64645310243838360782023-12-12T16:51:00.013+01:002023-12-29T09:21:35.938+01:00A meizanologist's diary (47)1 November: “Let’s climb the mountain,” says a gaudily painted signboard at the foot of Shimoichi-yama. Then we pass placards enjoining “Let’s keep the beautiful scenery forever” and, while we’re at it, “Let’s walk sprightly”. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoYrrTBrl1cVbrzKLmOyR-2qw1016Gu-7Tmj6zKswF-HfY8MeSTkeaDJ7qbKPlQefh_eDcLNgK1f4sRMHm0Mzaesvg47f8g_9v8D6Mb-6L8bwf-ceHAPh856-KJwcKUQOtLHwQrBXnyR8Zc-iji7A7wd0DmOR0zMFKouAHMNHQE5FBv3tdZk0WMyQbrZE/s710/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.28.58.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="530" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoYrrTBrl1cVbrzKLmOyR-2qw1016Gu-7Tmj6zKswF-HfY8MeSTkeaDJ7qbKPlQefh_eDcLNgK1f4sRMHm0Mzaesvg47f8g_9v8D6Mb-6L8bwf-ceHAPh856-KJwcKUQOtLHwQrBXnyR8Zc-iji7A7wd0DmOR0zMFKouAHMNHQE5FBv3tdZk0WMyQbrZE/w478-h640/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.28.58.png" width="478" /></a></div><br />As she is teaching this afternoon, the Sensei has sent me on a 6km route march along the local river bank, to a hill overlooking her native city. A path known as the “Miru-king” circuit (<span face="arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(77, 81, 86); color: #4d5156; font-size: 14px;">ミルキングロード) </span>leads to the summit and then loops down to the starting point. “I find it best to go anticlockwise,” she adds without explanation.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjew5Q4NOMq0p42B_e1iBy7URIHcI8ljlkqztvHSrgKNWeIlh0objgSvpPetrKkOlWjaeyaE7EuDehK6AZurnhlAw4wPMMcyxaXs_gb48BuM5uf88QTb_BlCXRKTCg6f4jkbNwsmA3bhZXEO4uJ_f9wHpnfH8a9SqPptF5lJm7lnV8omEl8RvBoJBxfr8/s913/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.30.35.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="913" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjew5Q4NOMq0p42B_e1iBy7URIHcI8ljlkqztvHSrgKNWeIlh0objgSvpPetrKkOlWjaeyaE7EuDehK6AZurnhlAw4wPMMcyxaXs_gb48BuM5uf88QTb_BlCXRKTCg6f4jkbNwsmA3bhZXEO4uJ_f9wHpnfH8a9SqPptF5lJm7lnV8omEl8RvBoJBxfr8/w400-h311/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.30.35.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />I’m still wondering why anticlockwise, and whether “Miru-king” has anything to do with cows, when the next series of exhortatory placards is met with: “Let’s enjoy the natural woodland” and “The satoyama is enjoyable.”<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5LvEgBL6EKGiOhs4hoUHXrcQni0Fq_wtpfWzFwBimSA8Zz90v7lEzc0VKLQ4zGeiyMlxEQ2l30xJ1xQZiSwnYayvNgTHDUcXkSU_llLz7FsV7TjYquhzoxySeGgi1Q_oFWqfvOCyunUjkxH-dSMVwLHMXjgA9du6KkN97Pu3qxwo8xFTyByS9-nLntwA/s950/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.31.46.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="950" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5LvEgBL6EKGiOhs4hoUHXrcQni0Fq_wtpfWzFwBimSA8Zz90v7lEzc0VKLQ4zGeiyMlxEQ2l30xJ1xQZiSwnYayvNgTHDUcXkSU_llLz7FsV7TjYquhzoxySeGgi1Q_oFWqfvOCyunUjkxH-dSMVwLHMXjgA9du6KkN97Pu3qxwo8xFTyByS9-nLntwA/w400-h295/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.31.46.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />On this sweltering afternoon, the satoyama looks more scruffy than enjoyable – Tokyo is boiling up to <a href="https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15051327#:~:text=The%20mercury%20hit%2027.5%20degrees,1%2C%201923." target="_blank">its hottest November day since 1923</a>. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9oCoZwcFrBBZo-XZVPrDddDBMgPYr2r1icXv9CK4JnLTO9sfUKSjQrkyGEoA8p3V_q8ezZtej5VgpqBkVqcrU3oVU0FHHkUM1XyNuiCk_n_FxlxjLEAhJ_Ci_ZsxIlTq3ZqbXBT4OT6Hx3zHpMkynQMxDEzglsx-xk9bGZgalo-ftAND4s5XePEs1otI/s950/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.32.53.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="950" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9oCoZwcFrBBZo-XZVPrDddDBMgPYr2r1icXv9CK4JnLTO9sfUKSjQrkyGEoA8p3V_q8ezZtej5VgpqBkVqcrU3oVU0FHHkUM1XyNuiCk_n_FxlxjLEAhJ_Ci_ZsxIlTq3ZqbXBT4OT6Hx3zHpMkynQMxDEzglsx-xk9bGZgalo-ftAND4s5XePEs1otI/w400-h293/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.32.53.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />The sign that urges “Let’s keep ourselves hydrated” has it right. It’s more than warm enough for hornets too, as another sign warns. Fortunately, none are buzzing about. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXAeXA96_soXu2IFhffMk_NwHD5Z_GJSbUy3hgP-3KjAMDuIRnWm1S_HCnY5E2N_hl7R_65FPPKNQASPUADe45VXEoAvFih26j_QSxix0GU9o6apKILHgdMKcSPFNBeWsCOzeQiJBcJozRWJM2Gm5H_uOjyOYCBPhYNc6ALQ1id6MuwnLWJginYP2qBGg/s695/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.34.19.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="528" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXAeXA96_soXu2IFhffMk_NwHD5Z_GJSbUy3hgP-3KjAMDuIRnWm1S_HCnY5E2N_hl7R_65FPPKNQASPUADe45VXEoAvFih26j_QSxix0GU9o6apKILHgdMKcSPFNBeWsCOzeQiJBcJozRWJM2Gm5H_uOjyOYCBPhYNc6ALQ1id6MuwnLWJginYP2qBGg/w486-h640/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.34.19.png" width="486" /></a></div><br /><div>In spring, though, the forest floor must shimmer in a purple haze of fawnlilies (katakuri) under the shade of the magnolias (ho’o-no-ki), redvein maples (urihada-kaede), mountain ashes (azukinashi) and sawtooth oaks (kunugi) – needless to say, we’re obliged to helpful labels for these identifications. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheH9q2YFi7nqO4RTTL6wShfZMIxparn5zPhwnwisQKXuymNTXmVjEwVZmO1fFMhtYRu2tiFp4OcctLHSDU3do3-dSB_1nreXBFUkwbwIZqxNCKZ_qrUZSvne2GhDEu6w2Lk-mgX3Rf9hXyB1PClbUY9SjnsR9vT16cDemb5le3DlacD0GuComXzx2oIto/s1300/DSCN0659-katakuri.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheH9q2YFi7nqO4RTTL6wShfZMIxparn5zPhwnwisQKXuymNTXmVjEwVZmO1fFMhtYRu2tiFp4OcctLHSDU3do3-dSB_1nreXBFUkwbwIZqxNCKZ_qrUZSvne2GhDEu6w2Lk-mgX3Rf9hXyB1PClbUY9SjnsR9vT16cDemb5le3DlacD0GuComXzx2oIto/w400-h300/DSCN0659-katakuri.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Are these trees native to the hill, or were they planted? I’ll have to ask a geobotanist – where is a <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-meizanologists-diary-44.html" target="_blank">Takahashi Kenji </a>when you need him?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiToCXMfHOnvy_d0v7VMoW31x4dznHo3LywU-BJ4-E6HSWoWgfg4lvp1-dVJjYTToV-x6pOzOvj6QBNmGh2XW2HIyj8Eh2ucPnaYHZtGYHWoTppyUZ2N5_OH3AtndD4m35DzQfb_xo2xoX4izDa_ZNeilZ6l9KwEUsFxLRFbcv_orwqHVehee6OxgyBFEs/s951/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.37.06.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="951" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiToCXMfHOnvy_d0v7VMoW31x4dznHo3LywU-BJ4-E6HSWoWgfg4lvp1-dVJjYTToV-x6pOzOvj6QBNmGh2XW2HIyj8Eh2ucPnaYHZtGYHWoTppyUZ2N5_OH3AtndD4m35DzQfb_xo2xoX4izDa_ZNeilZ6l9KwEUsFxLRFbcv_orwqHVehee6OxgyBFEs/w400-h295/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.37.06.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />On the summit, such as it is at 260 metres above sea level, an elderly man is taking in the view. Turns out he is a retired chemical engineer. On a clear day, you could see Hakusan from here, he says. “Miru-king”, it seems, has to do with “miru”(seeing) the sweeping panorama from this eminence. <i>Naruhodo na. </i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfROqbpyWdHFhDhKNMLkhUEHI2KqAeHso18EIwgHEXzXk-m8AkfV7bKVzH9QRqfkrd2DKXIcrGyzYKq0mifOOUr37ApVZomNPQGNVVi4G9gPUjO29HKZVrHhyphenhyphen9vf26ZsNba03rpz2Ie4Fhb7ZDEANN8YGgsRmqSd7_Hp6jJ19O3EhydBqY0lj59sih2d8/s354/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.40.51.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="272" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfROqbpyWdHFhDhKNMLkhUEHI2KqAeHso18EIwgHEXzXk-m8AkfV7bKVzH9QRqfkrd2DKXIcrGyzYKq0mifOOUr37ApVZomNPQGNVVi4G9gPUjO29HKZVrHhyphenhyphen9vf26ZsNba03rpz2Ie4Fhb7ZDEANN8YGgsRmqSd7_Hp6jJ19O3EhydBqY0lj59sih2d8/w154-h200/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.40.51.png" width="154" /></a></div>Then the conversation turns to the Russo-Japanese war – just how did we get there? It seems that the British helped to finance Japan’s war effort, via the so-called Takahashi Loans. I confess to having once visited the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Mikasa" target="_blank">Battleship Mikasa</a> at Yokosuka, one of the assets so financed. The fact that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takahashi_Korekiyo" target="_blank">Takahashi Korekiyo</a> was later assassinated for his pains is out of scope for this discussion. </div><div><br />A grass snake slithers off the path as I start down. Remarkable: a grass snake in November, although – come to think of it – the Sensei met with <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-meizanologists-diary-7.html" target="_blank">a viper </a>on a nearby mountain at around the same season a few years ago. <br /><br /><div>I'm going to have to walk sprightly now to get home before dark. Carrying on down and anticlockwise – perhaps the Sensei wanted to keep the heavy stuff till last – I encounter one last signboard:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJA0LjtQL-glP77ijgMscqgiYqudwjMCIji5QXMNEhh6v28GEguPA_tbrIYJ20gfZpLlrgVOW_rUQNqno2Z__RrF90aGSgU1WkPGI6hfPcRmgHykvqnk-wAg72HIZMIxsPDzYN4fMb_G1mzE3KV2N-XiKkoRb9U7dhwMghMZTV-kG8utXrBRpQxe5w5FA/s939/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.43.48.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="939" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJA0LjtQL-glP77ijgMscqgiYqudwjMCIji5QXMNEhh6v28GEguPA_tbrIYJ20gfZpLlrgVOW_rUQNqno2Z__RrF90aGSgU1WkPGI6hfPcRmgHykvqnk-wAg72HIZMIxsPDzYN4fMb_G1mzE3KV2N-XiKkoRb9U7dhwMghMZTV-kG8utXrBRpQxe5w5FA/w400-h299/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.43.48.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>Instead of encouraging me to <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganbaru" target="_blank">ganbare</a></i>, it records that the hill served as a fortress during the Warring Country era. In those days, the expansive view had a strategic purpose, and it was armed men who did the miru-king up on Shimoichi-yama.</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYGN4oKKl60KYB6Q0WARSmOfL70dmA6qob5pEFWrJUFPMOOmkGb-YLiJ1LHvTriMFJdwRPClYMeQvD9Yp81butdw0mWNDE29IG1Wmzoqllwq52NCe5VVqtQXM9SHb9TSkQGgx9UKuqdANtVQewFtRMqLlR9ABe2dawmshweP9cuypwFoVQ4K-CRv1AGzI/s702/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.45.53.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="476" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYGN4oKKl60KYB6Q0WARSmOfL70dmA6qob5pEFWrJUFPMOOmkGb-YLiJ1LHvTriMFJdwRPClYMeQvD9Yp81butdw0mWNDE29IG1Wmzoqllwq52NCe5VVqtQXM9SHb9TSkQGgx9UKuqdANtVQewFtRMqLlR9ABe2dawmshweP9cuypwFoVQ4K-CRv1AGzI/w434-h640/Screenshot%202023-12-12%20at%2016.45.53.png" width="434" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-19975418354167029262023-12-05T16:10:00.008+01:002023-12-11T15:47:40.448+01:00A meizanologist's diary (46)31 October: the Sensei is concerned about me visiting Tokyo at Halloween – scary things happen on the Yamanote Line, she says. Even so, I manage to navigate the badlands of Okubo without encountering more than a couple of witches and vampires. My destination is heralded by a sign proclaiming the Society for the Valid Utilization of the Mt. Fuji Weather Station. <br /><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUmGnraLJe0xmtKiYMI1x14DmHznhxVym52XwN0GM3dSSJjNsrCSMgELkt_-G6r4L77vBVTwD9IABxmwpQBa70L2llqbtIVAfgtxNDPfyGSs_RgnMccQ1VeENLDDlqkhxLzLYVgAmHPc8ztg94S8qDvmcTCm_FrT6V-jAgYGF7uLVcUZ1Mp48ZlbJLEXE/s1280/IMG_3200-fuji-research-stn-sign.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUmGnraLJe0xmtKiYMI1x14DmHznhxVym52XwN0GM3dSSJjNsrCSMgELkt_-G6r4L77vBVTwD9IABxmwpQBa70L2llqbtIVAfgtxNDPfyGSs_RgnMccQ1VeENLDDlqkhxLzLYVgAmHPc8ztg94S8qDvmcTCm_FrT6V-jAgYGF7uLVcUZ1Mp48ZlbJLEXE/w480-h640/IMG_3200-fuji-research-stn-sign.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />But today’s morning coffee is to be taken with members of the <a href="https://nonaka-archives.jimdofree.com/en/" target="_blank">Fuyō Nikki no kai</a>. This is an association dedicated to researching the story of the meteorologist <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2012/02/chiyokos-fuji-1.html" target="_blank">Nonaka Itaru and his wife Chiyoko</a>, who sojourned on the summit of Mt Fuji in the winter of 1895 – where they made round-the-clock weather observations to within an inch of their lives.<br /><br />In the chair is Professor Dokiya Yukiko, a moving spirit behind the re-utilisation of the former Mt Fuji Weather Station buildings for wider-ranging atmospheric research. Also present are Satō-san and Takahashi-san, two former members of the former weather station summit crew – Takahashi-san helped to toast the <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2014/09/give-me-radar.html" target="_blank">famous weather radar</a> farewell, when it was shut down for the last time in 1999. <br /><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilUBC21ALWQEujzQOTyCPDG5k7Mp-Mvunrqwdy0A0lc0Ft3hzdHaAznobKqemWscIVC5p8kGZWynd1Csr-KckDQ1tERvVK0rxBZX2wzKTdFGH0OeGHGtAXre2OBcHDUVVm50Pa9eW1ruVZcOt5HF180p5GLGKTDLNR7zeYvOsuyrIcbSfW-lJznrmdT7A/s1024/IMG_3205-sato-dokiya-ohmmori.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="681" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilUBC21ALWQEujzQOTyCPDG5k7Mp-Mvunrqwdy0A0lc0Ft3hzdHaAznobKqemWscIVC5p8kGZWynd1Csr-KckDQ1tERvVK0rxBZX2wzKTdFGH0OeGHGtAXre2OBcHDUVVm50Pa9eW1ruVZcOt5HF180p5GLGKTDLNR7zeYvOsuyrIcbSfW-lJznrmdT7A/w400-h266/IMG_3205-sato-dokiya-ohmmori.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />And it’s very good to see Ohmori Hisao again, who – in addition to commissioning the series of magazine articles that became <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2011/04/hyakumeizan-man.html" target="_blank">Nihon Hyakumeizan</a> – also edited the Mt Fuji memoirs of Nonaka Itaru and Chiyoko. Surprisingly, this was the first joint edition of their writings. </div><div><br /></div>It’s not often that scientists and literary folk sit down around the same table. And not for the first time, I wonder about the overlap between the Fuyō Nikki no kai, with its literary and historical focus, and the <a href="https://npofuji3776-english.jimdofree.com/booklet/">Mt Fuji Research Station</a> – which supports hard science, such as the programme that recently discovered <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2023/10/mt-fuji-meizan-of-aerological-science.html">microplastics in clouds</a>. <br /><br />Yet today it all makes perfect sense: the Mt Fuji Research Station traces its origins to the tiny summit hut occupied by Nonaka Itaru and Chiyoko in 1895. It carries on tradition of scientific adventure that goes back for more than a century …<br /><br /><div>Back in the Sensei’s hometown, after a four-hour journey by Kagayaki and Thunderbird, a very lively Halloween party has broken out on the station concourse. Surely it must be quieter on the Yamanote Line this evening....</div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-19165686979586970132023-12-03T16:46:00.013+01:002023-12-29T10:34:42.627+01:00A meizanologist's diary (45)30 October: as it’s a Monday, only the leisured classes can visit the mountains. Almost everyone in the group is retired, including our leader, the president of the local mountaineering club. By the same token, we are all – as <a href="https://www.allgreatquotes.com/shakespeare-quotes-1756/" target="_blank">Falstaff</a> so eloquently put it – if not clean past our youth, then with some smack of age in us.<br /><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiU9r2m48ztDLfsybb1Mux5sQj8c2xoDQchjUEvrtThXoUeia5yjvATManXhtc84WhjwN8LKS9xIfoexZ3FZYJVy2Shr1le75_UOPz9jp_8GdUtjVBwCztg0_VaXKHkpUC5Em5gFuk13SyoOun4MyaG_5UHe_q0hCo4J1dAg3Mu5KXwOmnKelTdJfnZj8/s1300/DSCN3926-colonne.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiU9r2m48ztDLfsybb1Mux5sQj8c2xoDQchjUEvrtThXoUeia5yjvATManXhtc84WhjwN8LKS9xIfoexZ3FZYJVy2Shr1le75_UOPz9jp_8GdUtjVBwCztg0_VaXKHkpUC5Em5gFuk13SyoOun4MyaG_5UHe_q0hCo4J1dAg3Mu5KXwOmnKelTdJfnZj8/w400-h300/DSCN3926-colonne.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The president is leading us up his local “Hausberg”, Nosaka-dake, this time by its western ridge. In the cool morning air, we gain height at the kind of stately but steady pace favoured by the best Swiss guides. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1aIWEmSuzYzxcg6HoeyK38_QfLcwSODeoe6JoFF5h5ufoG6TdceNXPGiKLIpYnRcM7NRGn0jbpjz-n-LYitI5FyYY6fCV56i5Lur_EOYdHOByAtqFWUAq4EhNTuJhZhHitE3vQC9gR1C0aLnBSTP9xQRpM7eiFGva1K42vDG-5IpqhLvbmOpqGyto-88/s1300/DSCN3919-gyoja-iwa.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1aIWEmSuzYzxcg6HoeyK38_QfLcwSODeoe6JoFF5h5ufoG6TdceNXPGiKLIpYnRcM7NRGn0jbpjz-n-LYitI5FyYY6fCV56i5Lur_EOYdHOByAtqFWUAq4EhNTuJhZhHitE3vQC9gR1C0aLnBSTP9xQRpM7eiFGva1K42vDG-5IpqhLvbmOpqGyto-88/w400-h300/DSCN3919-gyoja-iwa.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The view out over Tsuruga bay has already started to expand when we pass a sign to a “pilgrim’s rock” (Gyōja-iwa). Could it be that this mountain has more of a history than it lets on at first acquaintance?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisXayE6zbJ0DEXuWgCy3ymL6YCc8IKD0ezmDMCctEXjiOJk1vPdNwYoqETYkHjXl408_KRgBoAAJ2rg5gqQLV_dXXDy7T_hok8UfXAchEfXGUJHSsVjEY4JjODaKSP6VBHti7QEP-eeXWvxbO1NE4woxk2pE2lqMKtyYq9AratCJD_wNlXXI9-sx_ABiI/s1300/DSCN3924-leaves.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1064" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisXayE6zbJ0DEXuWgCy3ymL6YCc8IKD0ezmDMCctEXjiOJk1vPdNwYoqETYkHjXl408_KRgBoAAJ2rg5gqQLV_dXXDy7T_hok8UfXAchEfXGUJHSsVjEY4JjODaKSP6VBHti7QEP-eeXWvxbO1NE4woxk2pE2lqMKtyYq9AratCJD_wNlXXI9-sx_ABiI/w524-h640/DSCN3924-leaves.jpg" width="524" /></a></div><br />Emerging onto the wooded summit ridge, we look in vain for the woods of autumn. Here and there a maple tree, or some of its leaves at least, have assumed their customary scarlet. For the most part, though, the trees look drab, as if uncertain of the season. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAVMxZamoSOP6FGSgkhI5Y8OKkFkzP9nnRHDPvCr_374uyOyAdatM4mx_VhiiWsBP9icpH0pExmn5rw99H7O1xPWBuF-Rk7aNR8-km0FwwN-_wz4Om_3Y-bZygSeBsNP7nKdhqSD08g_UJo122URp5hcvQLwuf1FxkAV5OWK9LN6uybSeoZ-l_GVuu1i8/s1300/DSCN3935-nosaka-summit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="1300" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAVMxZamoSOP6FGSgkhI5Y8OKkFkzP9nnRHDPvCr_374uyOyAdatM4mx_VhiiWsBP9icpH0pExmn5rw99H7O1xPWBuF-Rk7aNR8-km0FwwN-_wz4Om_3Y-bZygSeBsNP7nKdhqSD08g_UJo122URp5hcvQLwuf1FxkAV5OWK9LN6uybSeoZ-l_GVuu1i8/w400-h261/DSCN3935-nosaka-summit.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Arriving on top in less than guidebook time, I realise that we’ve just received a masterclass on how to go about mountaineering when starting to relish the saltness of time. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjalyeb_ABK3HZR-zuJhL5jJXRehTTmBUQrw0imlg3xaqZtybNmKdzlpenfHdR7xAWkhLjyyKPnfJpiff_0uTmeWt2H37pbS_tx8D0d9B_9b_zWLpEQExqPMxptt2HqGMcXwIAIBzhUR5wnSc5sCEXUHzonuGV6Eyxy2EHVkJQLTV-H00XcREui6xzlb-8/s1300/DSCN3932-imo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="975" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjalyeb_ABK3HZR-zuJhL5jJXRehTTmBUQrw0imlg3xaqZtybNmKdzlpenfHdR7xAWkhLjyyKPnfJpiff_0uTmeWt2H37pbS_tx8D0d9B_9b_zWLpEQExqPMxptt2HqGMcXwIAIBzhUR5wnSc5sCEXUHzonuGV6Eyxy2EHVkJQLTV-H00XcREui6xzlb-8/w300-h400/DSCN3932-imo.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>Taking advantage of the warm sun – though it is a pity about the kōyō – we distribute ourselves around the summit marker to eat our rice balls and sweet potatoes; <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-meizanologists-diary-32.html" target="_blank">four years ago</a>, a chill wind drove us into the refuge hut. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb-Az0bqrknuq5vFVdRQOxHhX5pH86Y1jZkcfExQHwYgMzgAt1Xchyphenhyphen59cmjkLkWw37D9Al47oOBa85bpWXmnpMVwJ8BTNjo_jcs9l56Koo-SheOy_XVuGx4FvTFBEjCHN7TwjIaKCeKpKFGqe0xbFXIKkxgXho_5Jm1i_kzUJnZS7VNxbfFxhIJkYgnCw/s1356/DSCN3931-sankakuten.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1356" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb-Az0bqrknuq5vFVdRQOxHhX5pH86Y1jZkcfExQHwYgMzgAt1Xchyphenhyphen59cmjkLkWw37D9Al47oOBa85bpWXmnpMVwJ8BTNjo_jcs9l56Koo-SheOy_XVuGx4FvTFBEjCHN7TwjIaKCeKpKFGqe0xbFXIKkxgXho_5Jm1i_kzUJnZS7VNxbfFxhIJkYgnCw/s320/DSCN3931-sankakuten.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Small wonder that Nosaka-dake boasts one of those prestigious primary triangulation points. For a mountain of just 914 metres, the views are spacious – northwards, to the Japan Sea’s horizon and, to the south, more like a sea than a lake, the glinting shield of Biwa-ko. From here, you could easily credit the legend that Mt Fuji was built from the spoil left from digging out the lake. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpywgv7Z003yHNtdTI6dJDGMQKw5HZkg8vSDbh7FL3Fdwhb9C1u-0UE0yCazD8zdeWOMQJan21P_-6eulS7022Zx4EJpKeqe4SJvhFPLNz5oueguSQT0CIHZS6JWR11V8YIoCIz4ERredG8a-Dl1OlPbdPXpD8IC7SDdUTtR1rlF_KLxcBX0VjO4P3cbU/s1300/DSCN3948-pylon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="926" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpywgv7Z003yHNtdTI6dJDGMQKw5HZkg8vSDbh7FL3Fdwhb9C1u-0UE0yCazD8zdeWOMQJan21P_-6eulS7022Zx4EJpKeqe4SJvhFPLNz5oueguSQT0CIHZS6JWR11V8YIoCIz4ERredG8a-Dl1OlPbdPXpD8IC7SDdUTtR1rlF_KLxcBX0VjO4P3cbU/w456-h640/DSCN3948-pylon.jpg" width="456" /></a></div><br />Reluctantly, we start down. This time, we’ll do a traverse, descending via a ridge on the mountain’s north side. The beech woods have been cleared here, to make way for a line of pylons distributing electricity from Tsuruga’s nuclear power stations. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj450pFvWdVURYDVZZihyphenhyphenRmJqpwk6rgYKNKu7HnoEiOery-ZGeocw7rPNKPI2FC8V5wiH_829cnyoJ8jrpE89HE-OCQB5iZVRhqSVNt79hJjIV-G-RpglnY5RHXM97grVCoWyWKaQSTU9X7NWf68Y_hT2sqBm4OnX-AKFv79fuYh_mmvQ_KbYxHjyfUr3k/s1300/DSCN3955-gentians.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1236" data-original-width="1300" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj450pFvWdVURYDVZZihyphenhyphenRmJqpwk6rgYKNKu7HnoEiOery-ZGeocw7rPNKPI2FC8V5wiH_829cnyoJ8jrpE89HE-OCQB5iZVRhqSVNt79hJjIV-G-RpglnY5RHXM97grVCoWyWKaQSTU9X7NWf68Y_hT2sqBm4OnX-AKFv79fuYh_mmvQ_KbYxHjyfUr3k/w400-h380/DSCN3955-gentians.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />But it is right under one of these steel intrusives that we find a community of autumn gentians. They seem to like it out here, under an open sky. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOqn4_khyphenhyphenmKmrJnbWxJI340p8cu46pK_8n7UXXKZdkoXh8Ry7wbtS0gItSvpd-2xFE8ywOMtHK7Yorn7OY0gG-2HV83W3NmCWOK2OYpWHjP9F27sGYLUpPzHNTCiqYzHgzF3dO7BWuvfxPvVbUk7IpAi_UZz9UtqtyPaQ1wEvT_ZKtroL9EMLGAgr_LnU/s1300/DSCN3949-gentian.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1245" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOqn4_khyphenhyphenmKmrJnbWxJI340p8cu46pK_8n7UXXKZdkoXh8Ry7wbtS0gItSvpd-2xFE8ywOMtHK7Yorn7OY0gG-2HV83W3NmCWOK2OYpWHjP9F27sGYLUpPzHNTCiqYzHgzF3dO7BWuvfxPvVbUk7IpAi_UZz9UtqtyPaQ1wEvT_ZKtroL9EMLGAgr_LnU/w383-h400/DSCN3949-gentian.jpg" width="383" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNu4oeqHQVWvvQ0_d1hYf4-DhWnOgGqqA_WwK5nQdT3kkOeCTNSLk9ZtNgavE8WPgzDISq3_tFWhzbRauC8TY9yPmIv9r6iVQz7ayZoq5zax2YBApuXqyF-ITHFGc0n9nD9tCy7e-F2_qLplrPTwmmsUzI0MW7iUUjx4EAOurxy8YSPTgkDH4z6tfqhLA/s1300/DSCN3957-white-flower.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1211" data-original-width="1300" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNu4oeqHQVWvvQ0_d1hYf4-DhWnOgGqqA_WwK5nQdT3kkOeCTNSLk9ZtNgavE8WPgzDISq3_tFWhzbRauC8TY9yPmIv9r6iVQz7ayZoq5zax2YBApuXqyF-ITHFGc0n9nD9tCy7e-F2_qLplrPTwmmsUzI0MW7iUUjx4EAOurxy8YSPTgkDH4z6tfqhLA/w400-h373/DSCN3957-white-flower.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-7611972839932524762023-11-19T16:28:00.005+01:002023-11-20T21:08:03.294+01:00A meizanologist's diary (44)27 October: supper is shabu-shabu in northern Kyoto with senior members – let’s face it, we’re all senior in this company – of the university’s Academic Alpine Club. As mentioned<a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2010/10/north-ridge-boogie.html" target="_blank"> elsewhere</a>, the <a href="https://www.aack.info" target="_blank">Academic Alpine club of Kyoto</a> was founded in 1931 to pursue first ascents in the Himalaya, a mission it has pursued single-mindedly over the decades. <br /><br />I do wonder, as we sit down around the dark wooden table in the homely ryotei, how many thousand metres of vertical Himalayan ascent my hosts have collectively accounted for but – apart from a chance mention of Shishapangma, probably not by the normal route – the conversation takes another turn. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQAbGOX8xVLV3pSAU9qXzM4a1M4PvvvhGx7rvfJ_JB1XZDMBhfNdt5EIp4K1qGF9yeCZCIBVz78SOzCaDkgOSmjD5GZmOEP440vacLeP3iMkcaDjk3EXgA7n9MrdE_K3BemdfIeZNHtuF48PVZ4XjEXFhcq_eUd8lcFgfDsQkuO9m1NzkA0yw0pEGArqI/s1154/TK-group.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="1154" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQAbGOX8xVLV3pSAU9qXzM4a1M4PvvvhGx7rvfJ_JB1XZDMBhfNdt5EIp4K1qGF9yeCZCIBVz78SOzCaDkgOSmjD5GZmOEP440vacLeP3iMkcaDjk3EXgA7n9MrdE_K3BemdfIeZNHtuF48PVZ4XjEXFhcq_eUd8lcFgfDsQkuO9m1NzkA0yw0pEGArqI/w400-h240/TK-group.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Takahashi Kenji (circled) with members of the AACK, 1930s<br />Photo courtesy of the Academic Alpine Club of Kyoto</td></tr></tbody></table><br />We’re here because of a book – one that was given to an alpine club in Switzerland the best part of a century ago by Takahashi Kenji (1903-1947), known as Japan’s first geobotanist. Together with Imanishi Kinji (1902–1992) and Nishibori Eizaburō (1903–1989), two friends from his schooldays, Takahashi was one of the AACK’s principal founders.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIgLLBOGUW9OT0JRPRKGUWKiQdkWlojV1TcTK1L0dWSEDH-YyCqBHGUecwA_Mg9qm5bS96Hx4hkQT9atUu6zSyZ314AmiGbdvKLLIzY-ALg8VNdgfVMz48-VJPsjia8-gMB09WAryKWr2izfk2Wl80UNV0CIzLWlicH2jDB2yu36QKOvQ7loTElnR-jxk/s2000/IMG_3443-climbers-on-yari.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIgLLBOGUW9OT0JRPRKGUWKiQdkWlojV1TcTK1L0dWSEDH-YyCqBHGUecwA_Mg9qm5bS96Hx4hkQT9atUu6zSyZ314AmiGbdvKLLIzY-ALg8VNdgfVMz48-VJPsjia8-gMB09WAryKWr2izfk2Wl80UNV0CIzLWlicH2jDB2yu36QKOvQ7loTElnR-jxk/w480-h640/IMG_3443-climbers-on-yari.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Three climbers on Yari-ga-take, probably late 1920s<br />From <i>Nihon Arupusu </i>(The Japan Alps) as presented by Takahashi Kenji to the AACZ</td></tr></tbody></table><br />When the three of them pioneered a new route up <a href="https://climbjapan.blogspot.com/2015/09/tsurugidake-chinne-left-ridge.html" target="_blank">Tsurugi-dake’s formidable Chinne</a> – this was still in their schooldays – it was Takahashi who led the crux pitch. He was also one of the first to explore <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2009/06/beating-about-buttress.html" target="_blank">Kita-dake’s Buttress</a>. Later, he helped to modernise skiing techniques across the whole country, promoting them through two books and a series of “gasshuku” (training camps). <br /><br />This was in the 1930s, following his return from Europe. It was while studying in Zurich under the renowned ETH geobotanist <a href="https://library.ethz.ch/standorte-und-medien/plattformen/kurzportraets/eduard-ruebel-1876-1960.html" target="_blank">Eduard Rübel</a> (1876–1960) that Takahashi presented our club with a book about the Japan Alps. Inside the front cover, is a dedication in fluent German to mark the AACK’s founding: <br /><br /><i>“An AACZ Zürich! Von Dr. Kenji Takahashi. Zum Andenken bei der Geburt von unserem AAC Kyoto. (1931. Juni),”</i> the inscription runs.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTpzCx0DXmqTWJAV_dRBufUm9gLRc6yDHlfZbVGsBhcCU6S4Fb1FznuWafDfwIIO2dOHRy48LX2HqXWgu-H_cLw06etJr9ifLVT3F3yK-tXtZNc2ueRdDNx35_bWmxgp0oVjz8lXX4dVjJdjHkMrz0Ex50-OXUqkp-gsIaunIwALg_l8GwX5Gizp3eoA/s4030/IMG-inscription.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1601" data-original-width="4030" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTpzCx0DXmqTWJAV_dRBufUm9gLRc6yDHlfZbVGsBhcCU6S4Fb1FznuWafDfwIIO2dOHRy48LX2HqXWgu-H_cLw06etJr9ifLVT3F3yK-tXtZNc2ueRdDNx35_bWmxgp0oVjz8lXX4dVjJdjHkMrz0Ex50-OXUqkp-gsIaunIwALg_l8GwX5Gizp3eoA/w400-h159/IMG-inscription.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br />The book's chance rediscovery is what has brought us together for the evening, together with what seems like an inexhaustible supply of Kirin. Senior as we are, nobody is old enough to recall Takahashi himself. But the colour plates in the magnificent book he gave us bring back a whiff of those heady pioneering days in the Japan Alps…</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiePXAJsjSRLg9MApkP97vMpXhfFAs6mFCWAbA7wIz5ggOZe1Y30mWKKksmQ_4-YQulCSZzWoezhKUpT0gSXH_btVS4Q67UPZja4V7Jxe9IfCZo4dmazNusAbq82eBZEpc4Bgk1Q6bXqNwzOurSx0J0Cujv13f_41F1MmhJmDQnQG5hXIhTISuCZp4O5aQ/s2000/IMG_3439-campfire.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1310" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiePXAJsjSRLg9MApkP97vMpXhfFAs6mFCWAbA7wIz5ggOZe1Y30mWKKksmQ_4-YQulCSZzWoezhKUpT0gSXH_btVS4Q67UPZja4V7Jxe9IfCZo4dmazNusAbq82eBZEpc4Bgk1Q6bXqNwzOurSx0J0Cujv13f_41F1MmhJmDQnQG5hXIhTISuCZp4O5aQ/w420-h640/IMG_3439-campfire.jpg" width="420" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Around the campfire, Japan Alps, 1920s (?)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFtwhy_Xg0GMUnOy95UKA0eGOIK9TsGogpS6-2SsFbpZBjufbSTLVeyt0D1bSuqk1D143F49-aFyrh7dHX_z_BNEMoR29XlVbFABKW-urDoq7D27Zfc1Wqv2kFF23Mav9Qybscy6Y06PGzPeIQoLAwzvHtIGhJV620HLjexzR0XrvGLkOh-QKF5ywpfE/s2000/IMG_3442-kamikochi.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFtwhy_Xg0GMUnOy95UKA0eGOIK9TsGogpS6-2SsFbpZBjufbSTLVeyt0D1bSuqk1D143F49-aFyrh7dHX_z_BNEMoR29XlVbFABKW-urDoq7D27Zfc1Wqv2kFF23Mav9Qybscy6Y06PGzPeIQoLAwzvHtIGhJV620HLjexzR0XrvGLkOh-QKF5ywpfE/w400-h300/IMG_3442-kamikochi.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Morning at Kamikochi, late 1920s (?)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfdS5T5MerwPHTx0y_M-KqO9909C7F6ZHbcrmXfyh1GuTZxhParEhXotKgYve_hoyFCbWqqDxXin4dG8r6D9ngC2xYl3aoAvF1Lw-oC5fXK4TK914iHqH9J7Dp3YwoJ_BM5hoY04OHpCr6z7bLoJKNoPmifWIy22GQnBHe5c_0PG9LMBEDqFK_8p8mY8E/s2000/IMG_3436-crevasse.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1311" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfdS5T5MerwPHTx0y_M-KqO9909C7F6ZHbcrmXfyh1GuTZxhParEhXotKgYve_hoyFCbWqqDxXin4dG8r6D9ngC2xYl3aoAvF1Lw-oC5fXK4TK914iHqH9J7Dp3YwoJ_BM5hoY04OHpCr6z7bLoJKNoPmifWIy22GQnBHe5c_0PG9LMBEDqFK_8p8mY8E/w420-h640/IMG_3436-crevasse.jpg" width="420" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crevasse in a snowfield, Northern Japan Alps<br />(all three colour plates above are from <i>Nihon Arupusu</i>, <br />published by Shinkosha, Tokyo, June 1930)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-16524804744371057372023-11-15T21:11:00.005+01:002023-11-19T16:51:09.180+01:00A meizanologist’s diary (43)26 October: on the flight from HEL, the sun comes up somewhere over central Asia. A range of nameless mountains scrolls by, their arid wrinkles thrown into crisp relief by the morning light. <div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEm8xLE5UJodcA27dcJNRAg9-y9XJkKbEoKJTXhPV0j9O9vKbx18zImMz90MyDXfQURAbTI8AEsgal3bQXRfu_uP7T5Ph6zJAq07TUmMJSPokc6ajJZQ9ZsTjCOJLX6YYZaE-Mq98FjSop_wbrYeni5QfLSnbZifOHtkE04gUB92omxf30-aTJslgokg/s2000/IMG_3170-desert-mtns-b.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEm8xLE5UJodcA27dcJNRAg9-y9XJkKbEoKJTXhPV0j9O9vKbx18zImMz90MyDXfQURAbTI8AEsgal3bQXRfu_uP7T5Ph6zJAq07TUmMJSPokc6ajJZQ9ZsTjCOJLX6YYZaE-Mq98FjSop_wbrYeni5QfLSnbZifOHtkE04gUB92omxf30-aTJslgokg/w400-h300/IMG_3170-desert-mtns-b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>Was it not in these parts, somewhere near Kashgar, that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Shipton" target="_blank">Eric Shipton</a> (1907-1977) had his revelation about the curious effect of too many unclimbed peaks on the alpinist’s psyche?</div><div><br /><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>On even the most familiar journeys in this part of the world, unexplored ranges are such a commonplace, so much the order of the marching day, that to cross a side-stream whose source is known usually calls for excited comment; a peak distinguished with a name stands like a lighthouse in a limitless sea. This is enchanting, no doubt, but over-familiarity with these conditions has, I find , one unfortunate and rather disconcerting result. I appear to have lost a good deal of my interest in climbing mountains. Not entirely; but much of the rapturous enthusiasm seems to have gone. I recall, for example, my intense eagerness to make the second ascent of Mount Kenya, which for some months was a ruling passion of my life, and with some sadness contrast it with the nonchalance with which I gaze at a view of half a dozen peaks, greater in height, equally beautiful in form ...</i></blockquote><p>Is this sense of satiety just a matter of ageing, or perhaps no more than a personal quirk? Shipton thinks not:</p></div></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><i>I am not alone in this. I have often remarked, for example, how little members of the Mount Everest expeditions used to avail themselves of the opportunity, for many of them unique, of climbing virgin peaks around the Base Camp or in Sikkim. The excuse was rarely valid that the exhaustion of high climbing or lack of time prevented them …</i></p></div></div></blockquote><div><div>How, then, to explain this feeling, Shipton asks himself. Could it be that anonymous mountains fail to pique an alpinist's competitive spirit? Or that mountain-climbing has its roots in the instinct to explore, and so loses its allure once there is a whole new region to explore? But neither explanation, he decides, will hold water:</div><div><br /><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>It does not account for the fact that, in my present mood, I would undoubtedly be more stirred by a view of the Peuterey Ridge than by a ridge of twice the size of an unknown mountain … There is some quality about a buttress on Scafell that urges us to climb it which is lacking in a cliff that is less well-known by reason of the very profusion of precipices in which it is set. So, I find, it is with mountains themselves. Some kind of intimacy, either personal or historical, seems to be necessary, without which we are oppressed by an overwhelming sense of loneliness and awed by the insignificance of our achievement.</i> (Eric Shipton, <i>Mountains of Tartary</i>)</blockquote><br />I'm still ruminating about Shipton's musings when, some hours later, we coast in over Matsue, on the Japan Sea coast of Honshū. And there is Daisen! </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE1T3uFNhXDuNsjh9KmHk8mCTmT6naSSk91dDWdyevgYcesjz7RdX9F7_aJQ_udOlhNY0h5PQ3CTFC28newC8N8XfBmvLrdLBHb9HVPUepnmpwlXd5hL6rIY1Jzr1aONRCSYMOfydz0M1icqUdsgnSAMCaljKBgnizX-LRNXdT9qQADp7RAHaxCHSeNXI/s1300/DSCN3908-daisen-bw.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="929" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE1T3uFNhXDuNsjh9KmHk8mCTmT6naSSk91dDWdyevgYcesjz7RdX9F7_aJQ_udOlhNY0h5PQ3CTFC28newC8N8XfBmvLrdLBHb9HVPUepnmpwlXd5hL6rIY1Jzr1aONRCSYMOfydz0M1icqUdsgnSAMCaljKBgnizX-LRNXdT9qQADp7RAHaxCHSeNXI/w458-h640/DSCN3908-daisen-bw.jpg" width="458" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>Even from a height of several thousand metres, the dissected edifice of this extinct volcano distinguishes itself as a <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2008/05/meaning-of-meizan.html" target="_blank">Meizan</a>. Although scarcely less barren than those nameless mountains of the desert, it stands aloof over all its neighbours. It is steeped in legend and history – even its <a href="https://onehundredmountains.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-praise-of-shadows.html" target="_blank">shadow</a> has featured in a famous novel. As the Airbus starts its descent into KIX, no mountaineer with a window seat on the left-hand side of the plane could fail to be stirred by the sight of that crumbling ridgeline….</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh59vW391xLEDs6bFUAkeOPe72vBCUio5U9syeXROdsHc7AdNz8blll9BXzbEwIIJDNYlo5fysg2GL0NS6BvP_80ug7zqRadT3NgOJB3xrJ2lxIJG4AOfiPP6CVeU59Cf2G3LWihq-DMPlADRuecwZUf7wgvjeJsbYWt07pbRFml8hgjSK_SsSQJ2Bv8PA/s2000/IMG_3187-landing%20at%20KIX.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh59vW391xLEDs6bFUAkeOPe72vBCUio5U9syeXROdsHc7AdNz8blll9BXzbEwIIJDNYlo5fysg2GL0NS6BvP_80ug7zqRadT3NgOJB3xrJ2lxIJG4AOfiPP6CVeU59Cf2G3LWihq-DMPlADRuecwZUf7wgvjeJsbYWt07pbRFml8hgjSK_SsSQJ2Bv8PA/w480-h640/IMG_3187-landing%20at%20KIX.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-7796397521382540672023-10-14T20:28:00.004+02:002023-10-14T20:47:48.166+02:00Images and ink (52)<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhraC6-jAO89An03HufPziDwZQlmoMqB6SHJiHrVgaQWTR4I5EQJGyPW9E2MMOTLhUvru1L_sIfQxqsY-J_XBzzFrkoEfgrrPoWf9c3m-FXweqQzBtqnhzLpSLvU2LiMLlDgx1gv-vgyhnlPxqETNZ2nzqPf2_BGn1zaVXKa9HkEjpQ4eCiToLEfXc5VXA/s1300/gokyo-blue-lake2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="871" data-original-width="1300" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhraC6-jAO89An03HufPziDwZQlmoMqB6SHJiHrVgaQWTR4I5EQJGyPW9E2MMOTLhUvru1L_sIfQxqsY-J_XBzzFrkoEfgrrPoWf9c3m-FXweqQzBtqnhzLpSLvU2LiMLlDgx1gv-vgyhnlPxqETNZ2nzqPf2_BGn1zaVXKa9HkEjpQ4eCiToLEfXc5VXA/w400-h268/gokyo-blue-lake2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Image</b>: Lake at Gokyo Ri, Khumbu District, image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure. <br /><br /><b>Ink</b>: From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Maillart">Ella Maillart,</a> The Land of the Sherpas (1951).<br /><br /><i>Some bamboo poles indicated the miraculous sin-remitting spring. We quenched our thirst and Topgi filled his gourd with sacred water to take home with him. Only a lake of clear, calm waters can reflect an immutable peak or the infinite heaven, both symbols of perfection. For initiates the lake stands for the world of thought, the mind, which can only apprehend the absolute when it has become clear and calm. Here the fevered mind of Siva, who had drunk the poison of the world, mastered itself at last by concentrating every thought on the peace of this ineffable lake, goal and crown of that inner pilgrimage which alone is the true one.</i>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7618037172759094056.post-68092540391872110122023-10-13T21:20:00.009+02:002023-10-14T03:14:37.663+02:00Images and ink (51)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9uWB8ducRmGWEBqMeoZ3ed9v-ToDrioXVlV3tJj9qO4ZZ7gD-WLhUx7V4g-qZAatAkgjxaaW-4gBlnoHWMBzM7AZ_nPWfBI_siV99vREIjn6tEzUN9aCex308WoaqqwArKaGc3csN36mN81qjDjhROJH2v4Xqox0Q_ytwdXYpaeJM3IIBhoN-12SBvb0/s1300/sonam-lodge2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="871" data-original-width="1300" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9uWB8ducRmGWEBqMeoZ3ed9v-ToDrioXVlV3tJj9qO4ZZ7gD-WLhUx7V4g-qZAatAkgjxaaW-4gBlnoHWMBzM7AZ_nPWfBI_siV99vREIjn6tEzUN9aCex308WoaqqwArKaGc3csN36mN81qjDjhROJH2v4Xqox0Q_ytwdXYpaeJM3IIBhoN-12SBvb0/w400-h268/sonam-lodge2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>Image</b>: The proprietor at Sonam Lodge, Khumbu District, image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure. <p></p><br /><b>Ink</b>: From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Maillart">Ella Maillart,</a> The Land of the Sherpas (1951).<br /><br /><i>The hardy Sherpas scarcely feel the cold - any more than did the grandparents of our own mountaineers who lived in conditions so primitive that they would appal us. In the highest villages of Switzerland there are still many houses more wretched than those I saw in Nepal. I visited at least fifteen houses in all as I dealt out medicines to people suffering from abscesses, coughs, malaria and dysentery. The size of the rooms varied according to the substance of the owner, but the plan remained the same. My feeling of well-being was probably due to the happy proportions of an interior which exactly fulfils the needs of its inhabitants - as the round yurt does those of the Mongol - and had nothing to do with their degree of cleanliness! Comparison with the rich houses of the Tyrol, the Engadine or the Bemese Oberland would be pointless, but if one recalls the highest villages in the Trentino, the Valais, the Maurienne or the Vanoise, where life is reduced to the bare necessities, it becomes apparent that few mountain people are as well off as these Sherpas. When, a year later in London, I showed my film of Nepal, the colonel of a Gurkha regiment came up to me after the lecture. He spoke of the war in Asia and of the astonishing dignity of Gurkha soldiers in Japanese prisons. "Now I understand," he said. "They had behind them, as a part of their spiritual fibre, this perfect background. Compared with the poorer inhabitants of the overpopulated south, they are real aristocrats."</i>Project Hyakumeizanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04260637418886330553noreply@blogger.com0