Shirakami Sanchi World Heritage Beech tree forest - the Tsugaru pass

On Fri we went to Shirakami Sanchi a world heritage beech forest on the border of Akita and Aomori. It's big... and though I've been there several times, I've never really felt like I'd seen more than the most superficial glimpse... This time was much more satisfying, but there still remains so much to be seen...
First stop off the Tsugaru pass which has a lookout with a magnifient view of the Shirakami Sanchi.

Looking out from the Tsugaru pass over Shirakami.

Iwaki san covered by clouds, as it almost always seems to be... The local explantion seems to be it's covered because it's shy - in keeping with the local character.

It is never very easy to tell which mountain is which...

A confusing map -  the Japan Sea is on the west of Japan . Like many maps in Japan it is oriented
to where one is looking at it from.

The buses between Hirosaki and the Tsugaru Pass 

are not very frequent and for a very limited season only - June-Nov.

Mountain Vegetable 1 - The flower of the udo - broken in half the leaf
smells just like the vegetable.
http://www.nsknet.or.jp/~tomi-yasu/recipe/104_e.html  A recipe for udo

Mountain vegetable 2 zenmai - this is translated as something like bracken fern in 

English... Its totally different from my image which was more like a maidenhead fern

http://www.nibblekibble.com/archives/000320.php  This has a recipe for using zenmai

similar to but not as interesting as zenmai can be.

.

Very jungle like.

UNESCO's information on Shirakami:  http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/663
JNTO's information on Shirakami http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/indepth/scenic/worldheritage/c_2_shirakami.html