The snows in the mountains started about a month ago now and it is a reminder to me of how beautiful they can be. The picture with the apples trees in the foreground is three steps out my front door. Where I live is in a basin surrounded on all sides by mountains. In the southern end of the basin, where I am located, the mountains are high, but the northern end has the highest mountains of the area as you can see from the pictures above of snow capped mountains. Green rolling “hills” surround where I live while Mt. Iide and Mt Bandai punctuate the northern boundary of the Aizu Basin.
Japan has a very extensive range of mountains as it should being the work of millions of years of volcanic activity and plate shifting. Almost everywhere in Japan is mountainous and Japan’s most famous Mountain, Fuji, is in fact a volcano. It is also the highest peak in Japan at 3776m. While the mountains near me are lower, Iide at 2105m and Bandai at 1819m, most of the mountains in the Japanese Alps are near the 3000m mark. To give some perspective to this lets look at some of the other more famous mountains in the United States. The highest mountain in the Appalachians is Mount Mitchell at 2037m. On the west coast the tallest is Mt. Hood standing at 3429m. Timms Hill, 595m is the highest point in Wisconsin.
I love these mountains because it made Aizu a special place by cutting it off from the rest of japan so thoroughly and it has developed a lot of its own culture because of that.
2 comments:
I like to see your local surroundings, places you see or go everyday! It's nice to see the view out your window!
Like everywhere beauty can be found in what surrounds me. Day after day of being here sometimes I forget to stop and look, but certain days make me get out of the car and spend a few minutes just enjoying the view. This spring when you come you can see it too!
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