Shirouma

"Shirouma" is one of the famous names of mountain in Japan. There is The Japan Alps, consisted of The Northern, The Central and The Southern Alps. Shirouma is among The Northern Alps and its symbol. The meaning of "Shirouma" is interesting. Generally speaking, "Shirouma" is the meaning of "white horse" as "Shiro" is white and "uma" is horse. But frankly speaking, the original meaning was a little different and "a working horse in the muddy field" is correct (no meaning of "white").

My wife and I visited Shirouma in July 2002 and it was so fun! We climbed Happo-one (pronounce "oh-ne", hill), Sirouma-dake (peak), Shirouma-oike (pronounce "oh-ike", lake) and others. Shirouma is very famous with the icy-snow slopes. These snow slopes also remain in hot summer. Climbing the slippy snow slope is fun. But we must be careful not to slip down to the bottom of the valley. If so, you must climb again!

There are the alpine plants. The alpine flowers are pretty in white, yellow, pink and orange colors. The flowers are small because of severe climate of the high mountain as cold strong wind and snowfall in winter. The scientists say the climate of this mountain areas is one of the severest in the world.

These mountains are rigid. The symbol of this area is The Shirouma-dake of 2,932-meter high. There are two mountain huts at the top. We stayed at one of them. The hut was so crowded because many people visited in hot summer. In the early next morning, most people walked out of the house and watched the sunrise. The rising sun was beautiful with red, yellow, orange and purple clouds.

There are many small waterfalls and streams under the snow slopes. The water is very cold and comfortable to drink and wash hands or face. There are also several lakes (ike), and the famous ones are The Happo-ike and The Hakuba-Oike. We visited both.

I hope you will visit by yourself and enjoy sometime! :-)

fumi.kobayashi@nifty.com