Presently, I’m in the field for my annual Japan Autumn Leaves Essence of Japan photo workshop tour.  I’m exploring a region that I took the opportunity to finish scouting during the pandemic.  As an amateur historian, I have always been fascinated by Samurai lore, and one place that I often heard mentioned was Akiyamago with the word ronin.  Ronin simply means a masterless Samurai, in most cases after a lost battle, samurai from the losing side had three choices. One die with honor, seppuku.  Two join the enemy, traitor.  Three run to the backcountry with your family in tow, where nobody will hunt for you, and as I mentioned before Japan is 70% unpopulated wilderness, so there were countless locations a masterless ronin samurai and their families could flee to, and one of those locations is Akiyamago snow country, where  1-3 meters of snow in the winter in one snowfall is common.  After The Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and other Samurai battles, Akiyamago, a village inside a gorge that straddles Nagano and Niigata, became a safe haven for ronin.  On my first trip into this region I was dumbstruck that more people did not visit, as the autumn colors and landscapes are breathtaking as you can see in the photo attached to this newsletter, and it’s really a scene right out of a storybook.  In this region, I have seen some of the most brilliant reds, golds, oranges, and even the rare purple autumn leaves in all of my travels across Japan, and I’m happy to introduce them to participants on this year’s Autumn in Japan tour.  Although the region’s popularity is slowly growing, due to my thorough scouting of the region, I find off the beaten path locations so participants are enjoying once in a lifetime Japan autumn leaves from the same trees that the samurai and their families enjoyed hundreds of years ago, but this region is a tricky one to navigate, but it’s worth exploring if you have put in the time scouting and you have the right crew.  A lot of this region doesn’t have guard rails, and there are hundred foot drops, and I avoid them when I’m with participants.  You MUST know the region because this is the real back country, and in a lot of this region there’s no cell phone coverage.