The White Mountains

We're in Japan, so perhaps you'll find it odd that we're writing a post about the White Mountains of New Hampshire. But have faith, dear reader, for you shall soon understand.

Hiking in Japan is a lot like hiking in the Whites. Steep, unrelenting trails through the woods, booby-trapped with gnarled roots and twisted branches. To wit:

There's also plenty of slippery, moss-covered rocks, wet leaves, and mud:

And just like home, the views from the top would be awesome, if it weren't for the dense, tangled vegetation that maddeningly obscures every viewpoint...

At least there's the occasional break in the foliage, which allows you breathtaking views of... more foliage.

Even the signs are similar.  When they aren't rotted through, they tend towards hard-to-read, inaccurate and confusing.

In fact, the only real difference we could find was that summits are marked with Shinto shrines instead of rock piles. 

And so we're happy. Happy that we have such awesome, relaxing, and peaceful (horrible, treacherous, and bad-tempered) mountains back home. We're even happier to have hiked them for years, because whatever the world's thrown at us - from Patagonia to New Zealand to Japan - we're always confident it can't be harder than the Whites.  

Except maybe our next stop. In the Himalayas. Maybe - just maybe - those mountains will be steeper, more gnarled, and angrier than the Whites. But we're not holding our breath.