Over the past couple of years of writing for Asahikawa Tourism, one of the most frustrating things was not remembering whether to use Taisetsuzan or Daisetsuzan when writing about the Taisetsu (Daisetsu??...its starting again) mountain range.
Websites, both official and non-official seem to arbitrarily use one (Ta) over the other (Da) and leave it at that, not giving any hint as to why. It took two years of not deciding on which side of the fence Asahikawa Tourism would sit before I thought it may be a good idea to raise the issue with a born and raised Asahikawa local having a perfect understanding of the intricacies of the Japanese language and a working knowledge of Asahikawa's history, ...or W.i.f.e
It seems that the issue is relatively simple.
Daisetsuzan is the official name for the Daisetsu Mountain Range, it is the name that appears on the Range's birth certificate as well as all other official paper work, for example the law stating that impersonating wildlife documentary filmmakers like Werner Herzog in the "Daisetsuzan" in winter is prohibited under Article ????? (of course in summer go your hardest). Despite it being the official name, local people always refer to the range as the Taisetsuzan or Taisetsu Mountain Range, possibly because if you say Daisetsuzan quickly a thousand times, the D sound tends towards a T sound.
So there you have it, if you want to avoid sounding like a tourist, use Taisetsuzan.
Interestingly enough, the official name of Asahikawa is actually "Asahikgawa", again, the reason for the pronunciation is that in the event of you having to say "Asahigawa" several thousand times in quick succession the G will tend towards K. The founders of Asahigawa, being incredibly forward thinking, must have decided to make people pronounce the K since it was inevitably going to go that way in the end. Brilliant! - probably not true - but , Brilliant! if it is.
If someone was really looking for an answer on this issue, I hope this post helped.
Oh, and for good measure, here is a nice pic of the Taisetsuzan,
see you up there soon,
Greg
b.t.w: the person in the photo is "Q", local guide, and 'everything outdoors' expert
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