I opened my eyes: clouds broke against the ridgeline, sending their tendrils skyward in the eastern updraft, high above the vertiginous vista that stretched away to distant, snow-touched mountains. I was taking a breather on a narrow ledge close to the pinnacle of Tsurugi-dake — Sword Peak — the most thrilling mountain in Japan's North Alps. I was not so much tired as overwhelmed by beauty and the emptiness of space below me. Further up the cliff, the elderly couple who had adopted me that morning on the trail were waiting.

"You a man?" grandpa gestured graphically, questioning my manhood in the most encouraging way possible. Laughing, I found my courage and the next handhold. My honorary grandparents weren't the only old timers on the trail: The North Alps, with their broad variety of routes, extensive system of mountain huts and easy bus access, drew over 250,000 hikers in 2007, young and old, beginner and expert alike.

Recreational hiking in Japan is relatively new in the nation's long history: the mountains were considered foreboding and inhospitable, the realm of mountain priests and the gods, until a pair of Englishmen, William Gowland and Walter Weston, climbed them in the late 19th century.