上高地河童橋ライブカメラ KAMIKOCHI KAPPA-BASHI Live Cam

Never been to Japan? How do you visualize it?

I know that I used to think ‘Tokyo’.

Lots of buildings, cement, gaudy lights, flat-panel displays, high-tech dazzle.

The truth is that 70% of Japan is covered with forests.

As I describe in my book LIVE FROM JAPAN! and make vividly apparent with over 450 photos, my Japan is beautiful green fields of rice, soybeans, and many other vegetables, flowering and fruit trees, domesticated and occasional wild animals — monkeys, foxes, ferrets, raccoons, wild boar, even bears — countless varieties of birds.

But proof positive from my camping trip last week, after living here for almost 13 years, I still haven’t seen it all. Every time I venture into a new area of this relatively small country, I’m astonished by some side of Japan I couldn’t have imagined.

My wife and I just spent three days in the “Japanese Alps” — Kamikochi — a mountainous region in Nagano Prefecture. We hiked, checked out the scenery, breathed the refreshing clean mountain air, viewed the deep blue of a sky that is only rivaled by perhaps the Swiss Alps or the rich azure we experienced in Leh, Ladakh (northern India) some years back.

Words completely fail to capture the beauty of Kamikochi. So feast your eyes on some pics!