New info resource for Japanese Mountains

[abdon gonzalez]

Long story short: Japan's 100 most famous mountains is a list of mountains depicted in the 1964 collection of essays by Mountaineer/Author Kyuya Fukada. When he wasn’t busy strolling around the Himalayas, he climbed thousands upon thousands of Japanese mountains. When he wrote the book on his favorite 100 mountains of all time people listened.

Another long story short: In 2005 I moved to Japan, became fascinated by the list, and disenchanted by the fact that there is very little English information. Wanting to do something about that, I have been working on this project:

http://www.japangazetteer.com

This is still a work-in-progress. Feedback from fellow hikers would be appreciated.

[Brett .]

Abdon,
I am working on a similar list, climbing the highest mountains in Japan. So far I only finished #1, Fujisan. I was in the vicinity of #2 yesterday, but only on a day hike. It is tough to knock these out on day trips.
I have seen some great results of map overlays using Google Earth; it would be great if you could plot the list of 100 using that application, but regardlees, Im glad to see you working this; I will be checking in often..
Brett.

[abdon gonzalez]

yes, I'm using Google earth, both for the individual mountain pages, as well as a full overlay of all mountains on a single map. Here is the link to the full list on map:

http://www.japangazetteer.com/index.php?item=101

Just as good if not better, I also linked every mountain to the Japan GSI topo maps. You can pull full-resolution topo maps with trail details for every mountain.

– Abdon

[Miguel Arboleda]

Abdon, great news! There has always been so much lacking in information in English on the mountains in Japan… which makes them much less accessible and known about than mountains in a lot of other countries. I'm in the midst of writing a mountain guide to as many of the best hikes in Japan as I can put together. So far the original book by Paul Hunt, Hiking Japan, is way outdated, the book put out by Lonely Planet, "Hiking in Japan" is much too general, too often seeks out the bad points of a place instead of making an effort to find the good points, and focuses only on a few of the most popular places in Japan. The only other books available are "Walks Near Tokyo" and "More Walks Near Tokyo", which are okay, but they, too, are outdated and are not designed for mountain walkers. I've been taking quite a long time to put my book together because I just don't have the time to get to all the mountains I want to write about in the time I have off from work.

I've done about 30 of the 100 mountains now (have to check the exact amount). This summer I knocked off seven of them in one long walk. As the more challenging and remote mountains get checked off, so does the excitement of wanting to get out to them… I mean, Takao and Tuskuba just don't figure at the top of the list of mountains I really want to get to…. though I was lucky to see them 30 years ago when a lot of the mountains in Japan were a lot wilder. You should have seen the road going up to the South Alps back in 1977! Just picture Himalayan mountain roads…and almost nobody up there!

I'm just curious… wouldn't a name more indicative of mountains in Japan work better as a keyoword when people seek your site? Gazetteer gives more the impression of a newspaper, and doesn't seem to connote the intention of backpacking. Just a thought…

[abdon gonzalez]

I blame the site name to my Attention Deficit Disorder :} My first passion are the mountains, but here in Japan there are so many pilgrimage routes and old roads that I wanted to leave it as broad as possible. According to Wikipedia:

A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary, an important reference for information about places and place-names (see: toponomy), used in conjunction with an atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region or continent, the social statistics and physical features, such as mountains, waterways, or roads. Examples of information you would find include the location of places, dimensions of physical features, population, GDP, literacy rate, etc.

So, I wanted to keep it open-ended, while working on something more specific. While the title doesn’t spell out what the site is about, I’m counting on the search engines to point people to it.

I’m still filling basic blanks within the content, as well as a few lingering issues with the database (nothing is hard coded which means that I won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time I need to change something). Once that is done, I’ll register the site on several web directories, including Google. Once people start finding the site, I’m hoping that they will get involved and help with even more data.

We will see how it goes. As it stands, it has to be useful to a good number of people, and that by itself is an accomplishment.

[Arapiles .]

Lot of good info here:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Outdoors/8348/table.html

[Bill Fornshell]

Here is one for you to check out
if you haven't yet.

He is located in Yubari-city, Hokkaido. This is his full address if you are ever close enough to visit. Kaisoku ryodan – Hajime Kaneko Suehiro 1-80 Yubari-city Hakkaido Japan 068-0411 Tel/Fax 81-123-52-5355

I have bought a few things from him and he can take Paypal.

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