Emma Goto

Dandelion Chocolate, Factory & Cafe Kuramae

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 06:42:04 GMT

Wandering around the neighbourhood of Kuramae, Dandelion Chocolate was one of the places that I had seen pop up in recommendations from other stores a couple of times, so I decided I was due to check it out.

Actually this place (as the name might suggest) is more of a chocolate shop first and foremost.

Plenty of seating on the second floor

But of course I love coffee, so I got their cacao nib cold brew (750 yen). It was pretty tasty!

I think my friend got their hot chocolate, and a brownie

And I wouldn’t be surprised if their other coffee options are good as well - I didn’t realise it until I was looking at its menu online in preparation to write this blog post, but the beans are actually roasted by Single O, a popular Australian chain that’s one of my favourites for coffee in Tokyo.

Of course if you are looking for a specific coffee spot then this might not be it (and there are many great coffee spots in Kuramae for that) but this could be the perfect in between if you wanted some proper seating, or were visiting the area with someone that wasn’t necessarily a coffee person.

A cute touch - from one of the tables on the second floor you can see straight down into their kitchen below.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

Iron Widow

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Book review for Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. I rated it 3.5 stars.

In a futuristic world inspired by medieval China, the country of Huaxia is protected by giant robot mechas operated by male/female pairs. Mecha pilot Wu Zetian (inspired by the female Chinese ruler of the same name) struggles against a system where the men control the mechas, draining power from the women and often killing them in the process.

The use of a male/female pairing in mechas (rather than just a solo pilot) was a concept popularised by the movie Pacific Rim, but what immediately sprang to mind for me was the 2018 anime Darling in the FRANXX, and it turns out the author was inspired by that to write this novel.

Iron Widow is YA, which I am a little bit allergic to. But unlike something like Fourth Wing which is trashy-yet-entertaining, on the surface Iron Widow is a lot more earnest in its plot, especially with Wu Zetian's struggles against her family and the mecha system. Wu Zetian is raised in a patriarchal farming family, has her feet bound, and sees the unfairness of her older sister being sent off to be sacrificed as a concubine/female mecha pilot.

Wu Zetian as a character is very strong-willed, and has a very black and white style of thinking. We do see a bit of character growth as the book goes on as she meets people who challenge her assumptions. However, she remains with this rather fierce personality through most of the book (being totally fine with the idea of killing people) and for a girl who grew up on a rural farm, it does feel a bit unrealistic. I think the problem for me is I didn't really feel like I could relate to Wu Zetian as a character, since she never really displays much vulnerability - she always seems to be in this fierce, "always on" kind of mode.

I can't put my finger quite on what it was that I didn't like - if you described the plot to me, I would have thought it fairly interesting and I was enjoying the progression as I went through it and it wasn't boring or dry per se, but somehow the book felt very 2D. Like I was watching it happen from far away, but I didn't really feel immersed with the characters as people.

If you were curious about the anime Darling in the FRANXX, I enjoyed watching but it is pretty freaking cringey in some respects (google for an image of the cockpit setup). Iron Widow takes it in a still kind of weird, but more appropriate direction where the seats are in a yin yang setup and the pilots hug each other as they pilot the cockpit.

This book had completely been off of my radar, but I had been playing the game Tiny Bookshop and this was one of the books featured in the game. And then I happened to attend a book swap event where someone had fortuitously donated their copy of the book to the event so I got to take it home with me (thank you, stranger) and gave it a read. I think this will be one that I re-donate onwards to a new person at a future book swap event.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

Ship of Destiny

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Book review for Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb. I rated it 4 stars.

So after reading Ship of Magic and The Mad Ship, I'm back to read the third and final book in Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series.

Spoilers for all three books to follow.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

October 2026

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:47:09 GMT

We have officially hit autumn weather here in Japan, and after a rainy September it was nice to enjoy some sunnier days in October. Summer feels so endless with its heat in Tokyo, but then the pleasant autumn weather always seems to pass by in the blink of an eye so I'm trying to make the most of it! On the blog, I had a good mix of reading, coffee and hiking.

Hiking the Northern Alps: Mt Tate and Mt Shirouma

I kicked off October with two hikes in Japan's Northern Alps - Mt Tate and Mt Shirouma-dake. These are among the most popular of the Northern Alps hikes, but I had never quite gotten around to them for one reason or another.

Views from Mt Tate down to the Murodo plateau

The start of October in the Alps is really the tail end of the season and snow could set in at any time, but it's a pretty underrated time to be up there - it's not nearly as crowded as it can be in the hot summer months. If you bring enough warm clothes for the close-to-0°C mornings, I highly recommend it!

The ridgeline on Mt Shirouma

I did Mt Shirouma-dake as an overnight hike with a stay at their mountain hut, the largest one in Japan.

For beginners or people newer to the Northern Alps, I'd say it's a good introduction to doing a 2-day hike (hut bookings are fairly easy to come by too). The hike overall felt comfy and not too strenuous, so I can see its appeal for sure.

Visiting Morioka (to hike, of course)

I continued my hyakumeizan quest with a weekend trip up to Morioka. While we were there we hiked Iwate's three hyakumeizan - Mt Hayachine, Mt Iwate and Mt Hachimantai.

A ladder on the trail of Mt Hayachine

Having previously visited Hakodate in September, which is a similarly sized city (both have about 250,000 residents), it was quite interesting to see the differences. Hakodate has some major tourist sites like its ropeway and the Goryokaku fort, so there was more of a sense of having "things to do" while in the area... but the city also felt quite touristy, for lack of a better word.

View of Mt Iwate from Morioka city

On the other hand, there's really not much to do in Morioka if you are just staying in the city centre. But the city did feel more lived-in, and I enjoyed the vibe of walking around the town. I learned that there are actually the "Three Great Noodles of Morioka" - wanko soba, Morioka reimen and Morioka jajamen - and we were able to try two of the three.

Morioka jajamen

Morioka reimen

Funnily enough, although they are "Morioka's" noodles, actually they are inspired by China's zhajiangmian and North Korea's naengmyeon respectively.

This trip brings me to a grand total of 79/100 hyakumeizan - I hiked 13 this year! I'm so close to 80 that I wish I could have squeezed in another mountain earlier in the season, but I'll have to leave the excitement of reaching number 80 for 2027.

Updating my hyakumeizan page

Speaking of hyakumeizan, I spent some time this month updating my hyakumeizan page. The hyakumeizan is most commonly displayed as a list from shortest to tallest, or geographically from north to south. Realistically though, people who are looking to hike it are probably more interested in how easy or hard it is to get to each mountain, plus whether there's any opportunity to bundle two or three peaks into one weekend trip, so that's the angle I chose to take.

It can be a little bit overwhelming knowing where to start with the hyakumeizan, not to mention the amount of research involved - so I hope the page can help fellow hyakumeizan hunters in the future.

Coffee, coffee and more coffee

This month I put up a couple of new coffee spots on the blog. My favourite was WAYS COFFEE STAND up in Morioka, while closer to Tokyo I really enjoyed Light Up Coffee for its cosy vibes.

WAYS COFFEE STAND in Morioka. It seems to be a bit of a trend in Japan to write coffee shop names in all caps.

WAYS has a resident dog named Latte. Ugh, so cute.

Light Up Coffee in Shimokitazawa

I have a further six cafes that I've visited but haven't had the time to write about, so the backlog is starting to pile up. I've also hit the milestone of reviewing 50 coffee shops in Japan on my blog - not bad for a hobby I only started this year.

Being featured in Wonders of Web Weaving

In a first for me, I had the honour of being featured on fellow blogger James's podcast, Wonders of Web Weaving. It's a podcast series about people who are part of what is known as the "IndieWeb" (i.e. anyone who runs their own personal website). If you ever wanted to hear my voice, feel free to check it out - but there's also a transcript if reading is more your thing.

I'll admit I was pretty nervous for my first-ever podcast, but James was a really lovely host and asked a lot of good questions, so a big thank you to James for having me! James also used to blog about coffee, which was cool to read through. I find it interesting seeing how other people approach blogging about the same topics as me, since I don't see too many coffee bloggers around.

Books I reviewed this month

Some of the reviews I put up on the blog this month include:

The Power of Habit: one of my favourite productivity books, and just an overall interesting read. I can't say I've managed to change any of my habits, though.
The Everlasting: the 2026 Hugo Award winner about a historian going back in time to save a legendary knight.
The Tainted Cup: the 2025 Hugo Award winner (I figured I may as well read another Hugo winner). Imagine Sherlock Holmes and Watson, but living in an Attack on Titan-esque world with leviathans trying to breach the sea walls.
The Odyssey: it took me two months to procrastinate my way through this, but it's done! The Emily Wilson translation is very easy to read compared to the stuffiness of the Richmond Lattimore one.

For any Tokyo readers, I also did a post on where to buy English books in Japan. I'd been meaning to write it for a while, but with the recent launch of a new indie bookstore in Tokyo I figured it was as good a time as any.

Finally watching The Odyssey

I went on a bit of an odyssey of my own to get around to it, but I finally watched Christopher Nolan's Odyssey movie. We ended up just doing a regular screening rather than attempting to watch it in IMAX (we found the tickets too hard to get). If you aren't familiar, the IMAX screen is a lot taller than a regular screen, so at times the movie felt kind of zoomed in (I'd be thinking, "if I was watching this in IMAX I bet I could see the top of Matt Damon's head in this scene"). But even on a regular screen the movie was visually stunning. Overall though, I still think Interstellar is my favourite of the Nolan movies.

Watching some reality TV

October was also reality TV season for me. I'm a bit of an addict for the dating-themed ones, and I have to say that if you are at all a fan of the genre, season 3 of Japan's Love Village is honestly really good. The concept is to only feature men and women over 35 who generally have some sort of sad backstory or reason why they are single. They all live in the same house for a couple of months, and season 3 was set in a house at the base of Mt Fuji, which makes for a pretty impressive backdrop as well.

I've also been watching season 11 of Love is Blind, where contestants date and propose to each other without ever seeing their match's face. To be honest it's pretty bad, and I do a lot of skipping through scenes to get to the good bits. I just wanted to bring it up as a comparison, because with Love Village I've been doing absolutely no skipping at all (well, except the host commentary sometimes), so I think it's just really well-edited.

More crafty fun and social events

In my continued quest to make new friends in Tokyo, I attended a whopping 10 social events with new people in October. This included hobby meetups like knitting and embroidery, a book swap event, regular coffee catch-ups and even a hike (my specialty!)

My haul from a book swap event

That sounds like a lot (and it was - I think I did a few too many), but I figured that to improve my chances of making friends, I needed to cast as wide a net as possible. For November, I've made plans to meet up again with some of the people I met at these events, so overall things are looking promising.

What's next in November

I've been making good progress on my second knitting project (a vest).

Right now it's just a big rectangle which is easy enough (it's the back of it). Not too sure how the arm and neck holes are going to turn out so let's see where I can get up to in a month's time. I see people saying that they can finish knitting projects in 3 weeks or a month which I'm quite impressed by. I assume this is going to take me 2 - 3 months.

In other crafty news I've been eyeing Mercari (our Japanese equivalent of eBay), waiting for a good deal on a sewing machine. And I also started taking Mandarin lessons last month so that's been a good motivator to be a bit more consistent with it.

There's only two months left in the year (how scary), so I'm hoping to try and make the most of it!

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

Things to do in Morioka

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After hiking Mt Hayachine, Mt Iwate and Mt Hachimantai, we decided to devote the third day of our Morioka trip to the city itself. I didn’t really know too much about Morioka, but was curious to see how it would compare to Hakodate, a city with a similar population count that we visited earlier this year.

From a quick Google of what to do in Morioka, one page I read mentioned quite honestly that there actually isn’t that much to do in the city centre itself. One of its main attractions is Koiwai Farm, a really old (and big) farm that is located a short drive outside of the city.

So then, what is there to do in Morioka? What I found amusing was that there’s such a thing as the Three great noodles of Morioka.

The first of the three is wanko soba, which is just regular soba noodles but in tiny bowls (with the aim of eating like 100+ of them). I decided to give that a skip since you can eat soba anywhere. We decided to do noodles for both breakfast and lunch so we could try the other two (if you can’t already tell from my hiking blog, I’m a bit of a completionist).

Morioka Jajamen at Pairon Jajamen

First up for breakfast - Morioka Jajamen. To be honest this doesn’t have too great of an origin story. A guy named Takashina Kanshou spent some time living in an occupied part of China pre-WW2, was inspired by a Chinese dish called zhajiangmian and introduced it here in Morioka upon his return in 1945.

The poster says "born on The Continent (what Japan called China), raised in Morioka". I don't know if that refers to the dude or to the noodles, though.

So Morioka Jajamen is just the Japan-ified version of zhajiangmian (which is apparently one of the Ten Great Noodles of China).

I think there are different stores that sell Jajamen, but the OG is a chain of stores known as Pairon. We visited one of the ones near Morioka’s castle ruins, in the basement of a department store (link) in the hopes that it would be a bit less crowded than the one right at Morioka station.

We had to wait maybe 10 minutes to be seated, but overall not bad (also it was like 10am, lol).

The menu is very minimal - you can get the jajamen (じゃじゃ麺) in small, medium or large sizes. I chose to get the small size, which was more than enough (apparently the medium is 1.5x a regular serving of noodles).

Then there is also the option to get chi-tantan (ちーたんたん) for an additional 50 yen, which I’ll get to in a bit.

So, what is jajamen? It’s a bowl of thick noodles, with a blob of miso-and-meat paste on top.

Mix in all the paste before you eat it, and there is a tub of spare paste on the table as well if it’s not flavourful enough. Plus a bunch of other sauces like vinegar you can pour on top to suit your taste preference.

Finally, the chi-tantan is basically Chinese egg drop soup. Leave a mouthful of noodles in the bowl, mix in a raw egg, and call the staff over. They will take your bowl away and return with some hot broth.

Noodles don’t feel quite complete without soup, so this was quite the nice finisher (I think this bit is unique to the Japanese jajamen).

So my husband being Chinese wasn’t very impressed with Morioka’s jajamen (he says the Chinese version has more meat in it). But I get that if you just want something cheap and hearty and slightly greasy, this could do the trick.

Morioka Reimen

The next of the Three Great Noodles we tried was Morioka Reimen. Similar to jajamen, this is a bit of a ripoff of Korea’s naengmyeon. In Reimen’s case though, it was at least brought to Japan by a North Korean person. We visited the chain Pyon Pyon Sha right near the station.

It’s a cold noodle, with kimchi taste. The fun part of it is that large white thing at the front - I had assumed it was a pickle of some sort, but it’s actually a slice of pear. It’s seasonal so in summer they swap it out for watermelon.

The creator of reimen, Yang Yong-cheol, originally opened his store Shokudoen (it’s still open!) as a yakiniku restaurant while also serving the noodles. So traditionally the reimen stores we saw also seemed to all do yakiniku.

To be honest it’s just regular yakiniku, so if you are in Morioka to try their noodles I would make sure not to let yourself be led astray by ordering too much meat and instead try and focus on the noodles.

When we first tried to stop by Pyon Pyon Sha on a Sunday night, it was ridiculously crowded - a 2 hour wait at 7pm. At 3pm on Monday (a public holiday), it was a weird enough time that we were able to easily get a table straight away, and the place was pretty empty.

Morioka Castle Ruins

So in between the jajamen and the reimen, we visited Morioka’s Castle Ruins.

Basically it’s a nice little park, not much of the castle remains except for a few foundations here and there.

There was also a monument to popular poet Takuboku Ishikawa. I always like when I can make connections between two separate travel trips, and in this case while we were up in Hakodate we came across Takuboku’s gravesite. He was born in Iwate prefecture, and attended Morioka Middle School before dropping out.

The monument mentions that he would escape from school through a window

Also in the Castle Ruins was a statue of a bird that got me for a good second (I whipped out my camera in excitement thinking it was real).

Drinking some coffee at Ways Coffee

We also found the best coffee in Morioka (sample size of one, mind) at Ways Coffee, which is across the road from the park.

Morioka History and Culture Museum

And right next to the castle ruins was the Morioka History and Culture Museum.

The museum was pretty small, but had a very cute display on the Chagu Chagu Umakko horse festival, an over 200 year old tradition where they bling out some horses and walk a 14km route ending at Morioka Hachimangu Shrine.

Plus some sort of parade float (it was huge!).

There was also a craft festival going on outside and there was a cute bookstore running out of a van.

I had been playing a video game called Tiny Bookshop recently so it reminded me of that.

Morioka Hachimangu Shrine

Morioka’s main Shinto shrine is the Morioka Hachimangu, which is where the Chagu Chagu Umakko festival ends.

What I found interesting and unique to this shrine was that they had a series of 12 structures set up for each of the animals in the zodiac.

I suppose you can go up to your animal’s shrine and pray? They are very cute!

Also unique was the gogen-sama, a set of lion head statues which I also saw up near the summit of Mt Iwate.

And they had an area where you could tie your ema (a wooden plaque where you can write your prayers, common at shrines).

The ones here were specifically for doing well at school exams, so there were a lot of prayers about “I want to get into xyz university”.

What else to do in Morioka?

There are a couple of other buildings to check out.

The Konyacho Banya, a fire station from 1913.

The Bank of Iwate’s red brick building, built in 1911.

This looks very similar visually to the big structure at Tokyo Station, and actually it’s done by the same architect, Tatsuno Kingo.

Inside there was a local craft festival going on

And thirdly was the “Former 90th Bank” or what shows up on Google Maps is 旧第九十銀行, built in 1910. The interior is now a museum to the poet Takuboku - to be honest it’s mostly in Japanese so it wasn’t too interesting.

On the second floor was a little art gallery, though!

Viewing Mt Iwate

And finally, if you were wondering what are the good viewpoints for Mt Iwate, the classic one seems to be from the Kaiun Bridge.

We had a bit of time to kill before our Shinkansen home, so we just chilled on some benches here. I spotted a few birdies.

My thoughts on Morioka

I mentioned at the start of this post that I was quite curious how Morioka would compare to Hakodate. I will have to say that although Morioka doesn’t have any big-hitting tourist attractions like the Mt Hakodate ropeway or the Goryokaku fort, as a city it somehow feels more livable and nice to walk around than Hakodate did! I got more touristic vibes from Hakodate (which maybe to some extent is because they have those tourist attractions you can visit). It helps that they had pretty good coffee as well. I’m not too sure I would have a good enough reason to visit Morioka outside of hiking, though.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

Mt Hachimantai: a beginner-friendly hyakumeizan

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 03:32:37 GMT

Mt Hachimantai (八幡平, hachimantai) is the third of Iwate prefecture's Hundred Famous Mountains of Japan. I was a little dubious of the merits of Mt Hachimantai, as it's in the top five easiest of the hyakumeizans to hike. Its shortest hiking course is only an hour long, has little elevation gain, and is entirely on a paved path. Also you could argue that its best season is in early summer, when you get to see its famous snow-covered lake known as the Dragon Eye.

As a result, for me Mt Hachimantai was more of a detour after a fun day spent hiking Mt Iwate.

We did the loop clockwise, which gives you a couple of things to see.

A hole in the ground - the sign admits they don't actually know why it's there, whether it was once a small pond or if it's from volcanic activity

The Kagami-numa, which is what becomes the Dragon Eye in early summer

The Megane-numa, or Spectacles Pond

A sign pointing us to the peak of Mt Hachimantai

And then within 30 minutes we came to the mid-point of the hike, and the official peak of Mt Hachimantai.

This was my 79th hyakumeizan, and my last one for 2026! One fellow hyakumeizan hunter was here doing his best to prop up his phone on a rock to try and get a selfie - he was glad to see us show up so we could take his photo.

Peak marker for Mt Hachimantai, elevation 1613m

Not too much of a view from the observation deck, really

Many of the hyakumeizan peaks proudly mark themselves as such on their summit marker, but Hachimantai takes it a step further by having a plaque dedicated to being featured in the hyakumeizan book as well.

Luckily I have an English translation of the book on hand for the direct translation:

"Yet one can only truly appreciate Mt Hachimantai by walking through it. Far from being a level tableland, the plateau rises and falls in shallow swells. Its charm lies in its variety, as one crosses a clearing and enters another patch of primeval forest or crosses a hill to find a marsh on the other side."

I suppose I am doing a bit of a disservice to myself here for only taking the shortest, most direct course to the summit! Maybe one day I can come back to see the Dragon Eye, at least.

We continued on with our loop.

Towards the end we passed a lovely little lake with a hut on the opposite side. If you have a spare 30 minutes, you can also do a loop around past it.

Which I would have loved to do, but I could see the sun was setting and I knew we had a long drive back to Morioka ahead of us as well.

Mt Hachimantai also sits on the border of Akita and Iwate prefectures. They had a little marker for that.

Very unassuming - I would've wanted a line on the ground I could hop over or something!

And from near the visitor centre, I bet you could get an absolutely stunning view of Mt Iwate.

Just pointing it out, in case you don't know what that peak is

Unfortunately it was a bit too cloudy for us, but it was some very pretty scenery nonetheless.

A view of the sunset

Inside the visitor centre were some advertisements for the Hachimantai Dragon Eye.

It occurs for a few short weeks in May / June, as the snow partially starts to melt, and makes it look like an eyeball.

I also found this poster for Mt Iwate to be amusing.

Its key selling point is that after getting off the Shinkansen, it's only a 30 minute drive to its trailhead. I also had that exact thought when I climbed Mt Iwate - I was surprised by just how close to Morioka it is.

On our drive back to Morioka, the clouds cleared, giving us another chance of a view at Mt Iwate.

Once back at Morioka, we returned our rental car, scarfed down some food and had a well-deserved sleep before our final day in Morioka where we did some sightseeing.

When to hike Mt Hachimantai

Mt Hachimantai is hikeable from mid-May to the end of October. The trail in May - June will still be covered in snow, but it would be worth coming if you are interested in seeing the Dragon Eye phenomenon.

Hiking course options

The shortest course to hike Mt Hachimantai is a 1 hour loop. It's all along a path paved with stones, with some small amount of stairs. I wouldn't really recommend you do this - we only did it since we had just done a full day's hiking at Mt Iwate and wanted to peak-bag Mt Hachimantai out before returning to our hotel in Morioka.

If you have the spare time, I would highly encourage you to do this slightly longer course. The elevation gain is still pretty minimal, but you do get to enjoy a walk on the boardwalk through a field as well.

Public transport details

Hachimantai is a popular tourist spot even for non-hikers, so there are good public transportation options. This PDF for 2026 lists that the 八幡平自然散策バス or Shizen-sanpo bus operated from May 9 - June 5 for the Dragon Eye course, and then from 6 June - 18 October for their loop course. It seems no reservations are required.

This page lists that the bus departs Morioka station at 9:10am, and gets to Hachimantai at 11:05. You then have 4 hours to do the hiking course - the bus back departs at 14:55, and gets you back to Morioka station at 17:15.

You can pay via cash when you get off the bus (the machine only accepts coins and 1000 yen notes). Or you can go to a ticket booth near bus stop #7 at the east exit, and pre-purchase your ticket on the day.

Car access details

Hachimantai has a paid parking lot (500 yen a day), but I would encourage you if you can to park in the free parking lot which is only a couple of minutes' walk away.

The paid lot

The lower free carpark, on the right there

Just a short walk down the road

We actually saw quite a number of cars pull into the paid carpark - I don't think people are necessarily aware of the free one, especially if you drive past the paid one first.

Hachimantai is a 70 - 90 minute drive from Morioka city, depending on whether you use the highway with tolls or not. Since it is quite a touristy spot the whole road up is very well-maintained, albeit a bit windy in bits as you make your way up the mountain.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

Mt Iwate: hiking Morioka's mountain

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 03:18:58 GMT

Mt Iwate (岩手山, iwate-san) is the tallest mountain in Iwate prefecture at 2038m. In many respects it feels like the Iwate version of Mt Fuji, and is sometimes called "Nanbu Fuji", named for the Nanbu clan that once ruled the area. It is still an active volcano, and only recently reopened its trail in July of 2026 after being closed for all of the 2025 hiking season.

Mt Iwate is also one of the Hundred Famous Mountains of Japan and considering how remote some hyakumeizan can be, I was quite surprised by how easy to access it was - it's only a 30 minute drive from the city centre of Morioka.

We also spent a bit of time sightseeing in Morioka, and I was quite chuffed by how visible of a mountain this is from the city.

Considering it's an 8-hour roundtrip hike, we decided to kick things off nice and early with a 6:30am start at the Umagaeshi trailhead.

There's a campsite right at the trailhead.

There's a huge stack of split logs in a shelter here - actually you can volunteer to carry them up to the mountain hut at the 8th station.

I would recommend bringing a spare plastic bag or strapping it to the outside of your pack, as there's a lot of wood dust that disintegrates off of it

The trailhead has a sign marking that Mt Iwate is currently at a Level 1 for volcanic activity, which means it is safe to climb to the peak. If it's at a Level 2, the entire trail is closed off (make sure to double-check before you go!)

The first 30 minutes of the hike are in forest. Being a public holiday weekend, there were plenty of hikers about on the trail.

A little shrine that marks the 1st station

But soon we came above the tree line, where you stay for the rest of the climb up. The red colours of the autumn foliage were on full display here.

It had been a rather foggy start to the day, and I was worried about what sort of views we could get on the hike, but it turned out we didn't need to worry - we had managed to hike our way to above the clouds.

A sea of clouds - the Japanese have a word for this, unkai (雲海)

And out in the distance on the right-hand side we could see the broad peak of Mt Hayachine.

I had gotten a similar view of Mt Iwate from Mt Hayachine the day before too.

At the 2.5th station, there's the option to either take the new forest road on the right (新道) or the old panoramic trail (旧道) on the left. I heard that the panoramic trail is quite gravelly and not fun to descend on, so we decided to take that path on the climb up.

A little marker marking the 3rd station - 三合目 - a common feature on Japanese mountains to mark out sections (the 10th station is generally the top)

As we kept climbing, and climbing, I spotted a familiar figure - a man dressed in all red who we had also seen the day before, exuberantly waving around a sword at the peak of Mt Hayachine.

For hikers coming from Tokyo, many make the most of the weekend by hiking more than one of Iwate's peaks, so I suppose this guy had the same idea as we did.

The sea of clouds slowly starting to lift

At 9:30 we came to a bit of a clearing, and our first chance to get a direct view up towards the peak of Mt Iwate.

Before that though, the hiking course goes on a bit of a detour towards the 8th station refuge hut.

Refuge huts, known as hinan-goya (避難小屋), differ from regular mountain huts in Japan in that they are fairly minimally stocked (i.e. bring your own sleeping gear). In some cases they are for emergency use only, while in other cases you can plan your hike with the intention of staying there. In Mt Iwate's case, it has a caretaker onsite in summer, and it's okay to stay here overnight if you want to break up your hike into 2 days (and it's free!)

They were selling some merch as well

The mountain hut also had a supply of fresh spring water - safe to drink.

Even if you hiked Mt Iwate on a hot summer's day, I suppose you wouldn't have to worry about running out of water. (Note that in winter it is closed off).

There were plenty of people taking a break at the hut, and after a short break of our own, we pressed on.

A marker for the 8.5th station. This is the first mountain I've seen where they do station markers by halves, actually

Mt Iwate's official peak sits along its crater rim, and the hiking course takes you on a full loop around it.

There's a funny-looking Y-shaped trail on the climb up to the rim, as Mt Iwate has two trails up.

As you climb, in the opposite direction you can see out to another peak, apparently named 鬼ヶ城 or "Demon's castle".

We decided to take the left route up of the Y-shaped trail, and the right route down. To be honest I would recommend just taking the right route up-and-down. The left route is a steep slog on some very loose gravel.

But once you're up on the rim of Mt Iwate, it's a comfortable walk around to the peak itself.

One interesting characteristic of this crater rim loop is that the trail is dotted with little religious statues.

Some are a lot more weathered than others, but each seems to have a different image carved into them.

Apparently these are the 33 statues of the Kannon from Japanese Buddhism which were first put up in 1857. It's said that she can assume 33 different forms to help those in need.

And out in the distance, another view of Mt Hayachine.

Out on the left side of the crater is also a view down to Lake Onawashiro (御苗代湖).

And I was seeing all sorts of new things up here on Mt Iwate, for we also passed this little lion's head, known as a "gongen-sama", which seems to be a Tohoku-specific thing.

And around 11am we made it to the peak of Mt Iwate, which was a rather busy place with people lining up for a photo.

Mt Iwate, elevation 2038m

As it turns out the peak marker is double-sided, and the other side has a slightly cuter illustration with some flowers.

I think everyone was just following everyone else in lining up on that one side

On our hike up we had also realised that the red shirt guy we had spotted earlier was actually part of a larger group.

Mr Red shirt with his friends

We got to continue our walk around the rim of Mt Iwate, doing a full loop before making the descent back to the 8th station hut. Such lovely weather today!

In the middle of the crater is another peak known as Mt Myoko (妙高岳, elevation 1990m).

Curiously there seems to be a large cairn stacked up on the tip of it, but there's not a clear climbable trail to it.

With the reddish soil and the loop around the crater rim, I really was reminded of Mt Fuji.

I think that might be Mt Hayachine again in the distance there

Another view of Mt Myoko. My husband thought it looked like a boob with a nipple (boys will be boys, I guess)

Lady trying to make a rock stack!

Before completing the crater rim loop, we did a small detour to a shrine slightly down off of the rim.

There was a big sword here (Japanese religions seem to love their swords).

And an absolutely huge pillar.

This would be absolutely impossible to carry up from the town below, right? It seems in 1929 they carved it 300m below the summit, and towed it up the rest of the way.

Also it's not even hiking-related - it's to commemorate a local Iwate school that opened in 1926. (The school is still open today, and they commemorated 100 years this year by going in front of the pillar and singing the school song).

And next to the pillar is Mt Iwate Jinja shrine.

The shrine was filled with swords - which I learned from researching my hike for Mt Hayachine are like devotional offerings.

And there were more of these gongen-sama statues.

I couldn't find much in the way of English articles about them, but I did find one about how a wooden version of them is danced around, I suppose like a sort of lion dance.

We did see them again the next day at the Morioka Hachimangu Shrine as well!

I wonder if the ones on the mountain originally had ears but they fell off?

Putting the mystery of the stone heads aside, we took the path back up to the crater rim.

Then it was a descent back down to the mountain hut.

The fog and clouds started to roll in, so I'm glad we managed to enjoy the sunny skies while it lasted.

And with one final look at Mt Iwate's peak, it was time to begin our descent.

We took a slightly different path on the descent course, known as the new forest road (新道). We were planning on hiking Mt Hachimantai directly after this, so I was hoping we would be able to pick up a bit of speed on the descent. But actually this course really wasn't much easier than the hike up.

The group of red shirts at the summit had the same idea as us and they were just ahead of us for most of the way down (my husband and I nicknamed them the "red team").

They were saying how the carpark for Mt Hachimantai closes at 4pm and seemed to be in quite the rush. I was doing the math in my head of whether we were going to be able to get down the mountain in time, drive over to Mt Hachimantai and hike it or not!

Usually descents can feel quite long, but since we were in such a hurry and focusing our attention on not tripping over, it passed by quite quickly. We finished the hike around 2:20pm, after which we speeded off towards Mt Hachimantai.

Otsukaresamadeshita - a sign back at the trailhead telling us good job for today.

When to hike Mt Iwate

Mt Iwate can be hiked from July through to mid-October. We hiked it on the 11th of October, and you can see by the 29th of October on YAMAP that the scenery looks drastically different covered in snow.

Every year on the 1st of July, Mt Iwate holds their official "mountain opening" ceremony for the summer season. Looking on YAMAP in 2026, there was still snow at the end of May, but by sometime in June it has all melted, so you may be able to hike a little earlier than this depending on the conditions that year.

Hiking course options

Mt Iwate has a total of 7 different courses - 4 on the east side, and 3 on the west side. The west side courses, as of 2026, are still closed due to volcanic activity, leaving only the east side courses open. The most popular course is known as the Yanagisawa course, starting at the Umagaeshi trailhead.

This is the most popular course, from the Umagaeshi (馬返し) trailhead. It's also known as the Yanagisawa course (柳沢コース). Part-way up the climb at the 2.5th station you'll have the choice between taking the "new" (新道) and old (旧道) routes. I recommend taking the old on the way up, and the new on the way down as the old route is more gravely.

There is a toilet at the trailhead (although it had run out of toilet paper so BYO) and toilet at the 8th station refuge hut (very clean, with toilet paper).

The Yakehashiri course (焼走りコース) seems to be another option, although I didn't research it in too much detail. One of its main selling points is that you can pass by Mt Iwate's lava flow. The carpark here is also quite large (100 spots). It did seem at one point there was an onsen here too, but Google Maps now marks it as permanently closed.

Public transport details

Mt Iwate unfortunately does not have public transport access. Your main option will be to get a taxi to the trailhead. The nearest train station is Takizawa Station (滝沢駅), and from there it's about a 20 minute trip to the Umagaeshi trailhead (馬返し登山口). One person on YAMAP notes they paid 4000 yen to get a taxi.

We also did see one person get dropped off via taxi on the day of the hike at around 6:30am. I presume at this early hour you may need to book a taxi in advance? But since it's only a 30-minute drive from right outside Morioka station, I suppose your chances of finding a taxi may be higher than other more remote mountains.

Car access details

Being only a 30 minute drive from Morioka, this mountain felt very accessible. The carpark for the Umagaeshi trailhead was quite large across 3 lots, and has spots for 150+ cars.

We arrived on the Sunday of a 3-day public holiday weekend in October. Sometimes closer to Tokyo carparks can be a bit of a battlefield, but even arriving at 6:30, we were able to park in the first parking lot. I did notice that as we drove out after finishing our hike, there were quite a few cars in the second and even the third parking lots.

The road all the way to the trailhead was a well-maintained two lane road as well (no narrow, windy mountain roads here). Although note that I didn't get too much cell reception on the roads up to the trailhead so be aware of that.

If you're looking to hike via Yakehashiri instead, the carpark for that is here.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

Mt Hayachine: hiking Iwate's second tallest peak

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 07:30:40 GMT

Mt Hayachine (早池峰山, hayachine-san) is a mountain located in Tohoku's Iwate prefecture. At an elevation of 1917m, it's the second highest mountain in Iwate, and among some of the tallest mountains in the entire Tohoku region. I don't think it's as well-known as some of the other peaks like Mt Iwate or Mt Gassan - unless you, like many other Japanese hikers, are specifically setting out to hike the Hundred Famous Mountains of Japan.

Our hike starts at the Kawaranobo (河原の坊) trailhead's carpark. However note that the Kawaranobo trailhead course has been closed since 2016 due to a rockfall. So from here you must walk 30 - 40 minutes uphill along a road until you reach the Odagoe trailhead (小田越登山口).

In the summer season, there is a shuttle bus running that lets you skip this walk up the road and you get to start directly from Odagoe trailhead.

Here there's a final chance for a toilet break and the opportunity to fill in your tozan-todoke (hiking itinerary) before you begin your hike.

It had been a really rainy summer this year in Japan, and when you make hiking plans in advance you always have to worry a bit about the weather... so I was really glad that the entire weekend we were up in Morioka it was forecast to be sunny.

The hiking course starts in the forest.

But soon you pop up above the treeline, from where you have one long, rocky climb up to the summit.

Out in the opposite direction of Mt Hayachine is Mt Yakushi (薬師岳, elevation 1645m) which provides such a lovely view.

A very weathered rock that indicates which station on the course you are on. I can't quite make it out but maybe it's the 二 (2nd) station?

And out in the distance on our left, we could also see out to Mt Chokai (鳥海山, elevation 2236m), the second-highest peak in Tohoku.

Mt Chokai. On my list to climb, at some point!

Although it was a 3-day holiday weekend, the amount of people up on this mountain here didn't feel too crowded. I think partially this might be because Mt Hayachine is slightly more of a niche mountain, but also as many people flock to see the autumn foliage in October, and Mt Hayachine doesn't have as much of that on offer.

The one (slightly) thrilling part of the hike is a long ladder.

A group heading up - it looked pretty sturdy but to be safe I waited until they were fully up before hopping on the ladder myself

Once up the ladder, it's a ridgeline walk towards the peak.

The peak has a refuge hut as well.

It's unmanned, and although it doesn't have proper toilets it has portable toilet booths (i.e. you bring your own toilet bag. There was a disposal bin for it at the Odagoe trailhead).

Mt Hayachine has a wooden peak marker you can hold up for a photo.

And also a little shrine of sorts that is decorated with all sorts of swords, which are offerings left by worshippers.

One dude making good use of one of the swords for a photo. I didn't realise it until I was looking back at these photos, but I also saw this guy the very next day at Mt Iwate.

Mt Hayachine didn't particularly stand out as a visible peak while I was in Morioka city. However actually Mt Hayachine is viewable from the sea (see some nice pictures here), and so it was used as a landmark for fishermen and a peak that they prayed to for a bountiful catch.

The area around the peak seemed quite small and was a little crowded. After we had our lunch I wanted to try and spot Mt Iwate though and went poking around, and it was only then that I discovered there was a second clearing with some great views.

It's in an area to the left of the shrine, would recommend seeking it out if you want a quieter place for lunch

That's Mt Iwate in the distance there!

Possibly Morioka city is to the left of it - the peak is quite close to the city itself

After that, we headed back down the mountain, taking the same course we came up from.

The ladder was a little more scary on the descent.

Carpark visible on the right

Zoomed in, you can juuust about see it

I take photos of bugs just expecting them to be regular grasshoppers and the like, but a Google tells me that this is actually the "Hayachine-fukibatta"!

Nice!!

It can be found all the way up in Hokkaido too, so it's not exclusive to this peak, but I suppose it must have been first discovered here. I'm more of a bird person but I suppose even the creepy crawlies can be pretty cool as well.

One more look up to the peak - full of people climbing up in the morning, quite empty now

The hike only takes 5 - 6 hours, so even though we had a late-ish start (9am) we were back on the road down to the carpark by 2pm.

There were a couple of bicycles parked here too. We saw at least three people whizzing down the road on their bikes, so I suppose that's one way to make the hike a little bit shorter.

As a final note, actually you can get a rather lovely view of Mt Hayachine on the road as you head down. We didn't notice it on the hike up as it's always at your back.

There's a little water canal on the right here - when you spot that on your hike up, might be worth taking a look back to enjoy this view.

Sometimes peaks aren't always visible especially when it's cloudy or foggy, so it's always good to take any chance you can to spot the peak!

Shiwa's scarecrow festival

If you happen to be doing this hike by car, you'll pass by the Shiwa Furusato Center on your drive back to Morioka city. I only noticed it as we were driving by in the morning, but we decided to stop by on our way back.

They were holding their annual scarecrow festival (in 2026 it ran from 5 September - 3 November).

It was a rather amusing collection of scarecrows.

Shohei Ohtani - he's actually from Iwate prefecture. It's kind of a meme how much you see Ohtani's face on advertisements in Tokyo. Maybe Iwate is sick of him but I actually didn't see his face around as much, surprisingly!

Miffy as the girl with the pearl earring?

Oh, and the Furusato Center had some really cheap grapes as well!

And on our drive back to Morioka, we spotted Mt Iwate, which we were due to climb the next day. Cool mountain.

When to hike Mt Hayachine

Mt Hayachine can be hiked without snow between mid-June and mid-October. Note for public transport users you have a tiny window to do the hike in as the busses run only one weekend a month in June - September.

Hiking course options

This is the hiking course starting at the Kawaranobo (河原の坊) carpark. But note it is not the "Kawaranobo course" - which has been closed off due to rockfall since 2016. Regardless of whether you start at Kawaranobo or Odagoe, you will be hiking the Odagoe (小田越) course. So from Kawaranobo, you will walk 30-40 minutes up a road to get to the Odagoe trailhead.

During the summer weekend season (see below for more details) you cannot park at Kawaranobo, and instead need to park further down the road at a separate carpark. From there you can get a shuttle bus directly to Odagoe where you can start your hike.

If you are taking public transport also, the bus will take you direct to Odagoe, but its timetable is very limited.

Car access details

Mt Hayachine's main carpark is the Kawaranobo carpark, which is free. There was a toilet building on-site (a squat-style one).

The carpark itself is not too big, but there is some overflow parking as well, and also a couple of parking attendants (volunteers, maybe) pointing out where you should park. Considering the first 30 minutes of the hike is up a road (closed off to cars) realistically speaking I don't think there is any risk of running out of spots, as they could probably squeeze you up there if need be.

The carpark is an 80-minute drive from Morioka station, and the final 5km drive is up a rather narrow road. Note for nervous drivers that at times there isn't space for 2 cars to pass, so if there are any oncoming cars you may have to reverse back to the slightly wider bits.

However, note that this carpark is closed when the shuttle bus is operating (more on that in the section below) and instead you'll park at the Take carpark (岳駐車場).

Mt Hayachine shuttle bus

Considering that the Kawaranobo carpark is not that big, and the road up is narrow, at popular times they just close off that carpark completely and instead run a shuttle bus up to the trailhead. The details are available here but in 2026, this was on weekends from the 14th of June until the 2nd of August. There are not yet any details for 2027's bus, but their website mentions they will release the details at the end of April each year.

In that case, you need to park at the Take carpark (岳駐車場) which is at the Hayachine Shrine, just before the narrow road up to the trailhead begins. In 2026 the shuttle bus was running every 30 minutes from 5:30am. It takes 25 minutes and will take you directly to the Odagoe (小田越) trailhead. Which means you can get straight to the hiking and skip the walk up the road I did at the beginning. The shuttle bus costs 1500 yen one way, and doesn't require a reservation.

I think maybe as a Tokyo resident I had it in my mind that visiting the Tohoku region was something best done in autumn (after all, in summer we have the Alps to climb!) but actually according to YAMAP's stats Mt Hayachine's most popular month to climb is in July, which sees nearly 3x the hikers it gets in October, so it makes sense that they need to put on buses.

Public transport access

Mt Hayachine is public transport-accessible for a limited window each year. The same organisation that runs the shuttle buses from the carpark also does a bus called their 環境保全バス (Kankyo-hozen bus). This does require a reservation, at least 1 week in advance before the date you plan to hike.

The bus route passes by both Hanamaki station (花巻駅) and Shin-Hanamaki station (新花巻駅). It seems Shin-Hanamaki is only on the Shinkansen train line, so if you are coming from Morioka, getting a local train to Hanamaki, then getting on the bus would be what I recommend. If you are coming from Tokyo though, you can get the Shinkansen directly from Tokyo to Shin-Hanamaki.

The details are on the same PDF (2026 link here) that lists the details for the carpark shuttle bus, in the little red box marked 直行バスのお知らせ. In 2026 it only ran one weekend a month in June - September, as well as during Silver Week, so it's quite a limited run.

From Hanamaki station to the Odagoe (小田越) trailhead, it's 1800 yen one way. The only times for 2026 were:

9:20 Hanamaki station -> 10:54 Odagoe trailhead
16:42 Odagoe trailhead -> 18:15 Hanamaki station

You are given 6 hours to do the hike. The hike is expected to take you 3hr 45min from Odagoe, so this is very a reasonable enough amount of time. And considering the late 9:20am start, you can get on the first Shinkansen out of Tokyo at 6am, and make it in time for this bus.

Outside of the operating days of the bus, your only option would be to get a taxi. Here is one example on YAMAP where a hiker got a train to Ishidori station, and then spent 9000 yen one way to get the taxi to Odagoe trailhead. This requires a prior reservation.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

The Mad Ship

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 11:59:24 GMT

Book review for The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb. I rated it 4 stars.

This book is the second in the Liveship Traders trilogy - it's been a while since I've continued a book series so that at least gives some indication to it being an interesting book for me!

A lot of the issues I had with the first book, Ship of Magic, persist in the second. Hobb's style of fantasy tends towards real and gritty, and not at all a comfy world that you would actually want to live in. There's sexual violence towards women and a romance plotline that continues to develop between 13-year-old Malta and 20-year-old Reyn (ew).

But Hobb once again partially redeems herself by including a lot of strong female characters. The story is quite female-centric, albeit it's more about them trying to make their way through the realities of a male-dominated world rather than a "woo, go women!" female empowerment type of story.

The first half of the book involves a lot of cringing as we deal with unlikeable characters. Plus we watch the characters move through the world expecting things to be a certain way e.g. to see their family come home while we as the all-knowing reader know that actually, their family isn't going to come home which adds to that "oh no" feeling.

Spoilers for both books follow.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

WAYS COFFEE STAND, Morioka

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:29:55 GMT

WAYS COFFEE STAND is a specialty coffee store in Morioka, in a rather central location right next to its castle ruins and shrine. We came up to Morioka recently for a weekend hiking trip and had the opportunity to try just one coffee spot before we went home. Either Morioka has amazingly good coffee, or we managed to happen upon the best pour-over coffee in Morioka on the first try because the pour-over here was on point!

At first glance they seem to be just running a takeaway shop down an alleyway, but actually they have a small shop where they sell clothing and other knickknacks as well. The barista/owner can take your order from either side.

The cafe is run by a husband-and-wife team, and their rather cute dog keeps them company as well.

The cutest dog, look at those eyes!

In the 50+ cafes I’ve visited across Japan, this is the first one that has had a resident dog. It’s a dachshund named Latte - which is the most perfect name for it considering its colouring.

Now, onto the coffee menu. They serve from dark to light roasts, ranging from 600 yen to 1200 yen on the priciest end.

All but one of the beans were washed, so I chose to get the Colombia Las Flores (double anaerobic thermal shock, 1100 yen) and my husband got the medium roast Guatemala El Injerto (washed, 600 yen).

The store is technically takeaway-only, but there are a couple of small benches inside the store where you can rest for a bit before you head out.

Both cups were super smooth and tasty. The medium roast Guatemala was super easy to drink - not bitter at all, and almost a bit sweet. The light roast Colombia wasn’t acidic at all, and like the tasting notes, it had that taste of tea coming through. I was honestly so in love with the Colombia bean, I wouldn’t have thought a tiny shop up in Morioka would serve such amazing tasting cups of coffee.

Although you can’t tell from the tasting cards (which all have the store’s logo), WAYS has a bit of an interesting quirk where although they are a roaster, they choose to only roast their own medium / dark roast beans, and instead import their light roast beans from roasters across Japan like Leaves and Fushi. I forgot to ask where the Colombia bean came from, but if I had to guess it was probably Fushi’s.

The iconic Leaves coffee bags down the bottom there

I asked the owner if this was because it’s harder to do light roasts. He said not necessarily - but more because there are so many stores across Japan that specialise in light roasts, so he’d rather just showcase them. But he occasionally does his own light roasts too, if the mood strikes.

If you hadn't heard of them already, Leaves is a big name in the coffee scene in Tokyo - here they are featured in one of the coffee magazines that was lying around in the store

They had a second floor with a clothing pop-up store running too.

The owner is on the quiet side, but as soon as you start asking him about coffee, he’s happy to chat. I was curious about what drippers they were using, and he told me it was the CT62, made by a Taiwanese coffee brand called Tasters Coffee. They have a store down in Kobe as well.

He showed me the dripper

He told me that it’s pretty niche. And for sure I hadn’t seen another pour-over shop using it before - I tend to see Hario V60s and Kalita Waves if anything. Its special characteristic is that compared to a V60, which has a 60° angle, the CT62 has 62°, a tiny bit steeper. Looking online, it’s supposed to maximise sweetness and lead to a smoother extraction. Maybe that’s what makes their coffee taste so darn good!

When I went up to the counter to buy some beans, unfortunately I was told that the tasty Colombia bean was sold out… but that they had a shipment of new beans coming in just that afternoon if I wanted to come back later.

Which worked pretty well for our plans, since we had wanted to check out Morioka’s castle ruins, and just wander around the city for a bit before heading back home to Tokyo.

The castle ruins don’t have much in the way of ruins left - it’s more just like a big hill.

Nowadays there are plenty of big buildings in the way, but you can imagine back in the day it would have given you a pretty good view out onto Morioka below (and that’s Mt Iwate in the back there).

There was also randomly a huge stone plinth.

Once a statue of a horse had stood here, plus a plaque affixed on the side of it, but both had been melted down for use during WW2. (The famous Hachiko statue in Shibuya suffered a similar fate, but was re-cast after WW2).

Since we visited on a 3-day public holiday weekend, there was also the Kita no Craft Fair set up beside the Morioka Castle Ruins. Interestingly I spotted about 3 separate pour-over coffee stands running in this tiny fair, so I think it’s safe to say the pour-over coffee culture is pretty strong here in Morioka.

I didn’t get to try any of the coffees here but just noting the pour-over spots that were listed on the vendor list:

Fukosha roaster near Koiwai farms (one of the main tourist spots of Morioka). From the interior it looks a bit more like your traditional kissaten (dark roast) style of coffee
Suidobashi coffee roastery near Morioka. Oddly they don’t even have any Google Maps reviews, but have a small Instagram account which seems to be legit
08COFFEE from all the way in Akita (about a 2-hour drive west of Morioka)
Cafe des Gitanes: near Aomori station (a 2-hour drive north of Morioka)

When we arrived back in the afternoon, they had two new beans from Fushi, a coffee roaster all the way in Okinawa, available for sale.

The two options ranged from 3000 yen to 4000 yen, which to be honest is usually a bit out of my price range, but I thought why the heck not, and splurged on this pack of Brazil Geisha beans (natural anaerobic) for 3000 yen.

And of course I am always curious about mark-up when it comes to buying these beans, and looking at the bean listing on Fushi’s website itself - there is absolutely no mark-up. Which I am actually kind of amazed by, as I have seen another famous Tokyo coffee store that does a ridiculous 2 - 2.5x mark-up on the imported beans they sell.

I would suspect that WAYS has a pretty good relationship with Fushi, as I see on their Instagram they have been selling their beans for quite a while now. I’m sure being in Okinawa it’s hard for them to naturally get customers stopping by their store, so this is a win-win for both of them.

Fushi’s coffee beans: the verdict

And so this part of the post becomes a review of Fushi rather than of WAYS. This was my first time buying a Geisha bean, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

When sniffing the bean, actually it had quite a spicy scent, which reminded me of this Colombia La Esperanza I had tried from Porta Coffee Stand a while back.

I decided to go with my standard 92°C, which was also what the owner of WAYS recommended and uses (and he said you can go higher based on personal preference). At first I tried the Leaves method, which provides a faster extraction and is my usual go-to, but it tasted a bit acidic and possibly under-extracted. Then I tried Hoffmann’s method, which was my original go-to, but these days I’m finding it’s not as good as Light Up Coffee’s method, which is what I eventually settled on.

It still tasted a bit acidic, but more of a good sort rather than any sense of under-extracted-ness. The almost spicy taste comes through, and also there’s this distinct, almost savoury taste? I don’t think that’s quite the right word for it (like it takes up a lot of space in my mouth, is the best way I can put it), but it was the same sort of taste I experienced at the Geisha-exclusive store GESHARY so maybe this is the characteristic of the Geisha bean.

Unfortunately the packaging didn’t mention any sort of roast date (and I forgot to ask) but the taste of the bean did improve as we finished it off over the next 1 - 2 weeks, so I suspect maybe we should have waited a bit longer to begin drinking it!

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

Where to buy English books in Tokyo (new and second-hand)

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:11:03 GMT

Although I do most of my reading on my Kindle, there’s something I love about visiting bookstores - it’s a lot of fun just browsing the covers and seeing what pops out at you. Lately I’ve found myself wanting to start reading physical books again too, so I’ve started building up a small collection in my Tokyo apartment.

Of course English-language bookstores are limited in Tokyo, but there are some big stores like Kinokuniya and Maruzen that stock a decent amount of English books. Featherheart Books is another great option if you would like to support an indie bookstore, and other avenues like attending book swap events or using Mercari can get you some books for free or cheap.

Maruzen Marunouchi: possibly the largest selection of English-language books in Tokyo

Maruzen is a popular bookstore chain, with their Maruzen Marunouchi outside Tokyo station has a very large selection of English books on their 4th floor.

If you were looking to check out as many books as possible, this would be the place to go to!

Along with books they had a bunch of Harry Potter merch and other knicknacks

The location of the store is very convenient as well, being located right outside of Tokyo station - if you come from the metro line, you can actually walk straight into Maruzen without even stepping outside (we came via exit B2b).

If you were ever tossing up between four different editions of P&P, Maruzen's got you covered

With the first three floors dedicated to Japanese books, this is also probably the best option if you wanted to hit up a Japanese and English bookstore in one go.

Kinokuniya in Shinjuku: the biggest English-language bookstore in Tokyo

Kinikouniya is another popular bookstore chain (actually they have gone international and they had a big store in Sydney’s CBD which I used to frequent when I was younger) and their Shinjuku branch in particular is dedicated to English language books. So although I think Maruzen may win the prize of having the largest selection of English language books in a store, Kinokuniya technically wins for being the largest store dedicated solely to English language books.

Maybe I’m a little biased (having grown up with a Kinokuniya) but I like this shop better than Maruzen - it feels quieter, classier, and although there may be slightly less books to browse, it’s still very solid collection of good ones.

The top-sellers for 2025 at Kinokuniya - surprisingly it's skewed more non-fiction and business.

Confusingly on Google Maps the store is called “Books Kinokuniya Tokyo”, but it is actually located across the road from JR Shinjuku Station. Head out the South or New South exits, and look for signs for the Takashimaya department store.

Note Kinokuniya also has an online store where you can check their inventory before heading over.

Kinikouniya vs Maruzen: which is cheaper?

I had a friend tell me that Maruzen was cheaper than Kinikouniya, so when I visited Maruzen recently I decided to investigate this rumour for myself.

I noted down a couple of titles while I was there and then compared it to Kinokuniya, which has an online store.

Maruzen vs Kinokuniya (online webstore):

Atomic Habits: 5808 yen vs 4469
Taiwan Travelogue: 4743 yen vs 3534 yen
Children of Time: 3267 yen vs 3052 yen

So Kinokuniya wins on all three counts! Note this may not be a fair comparison - Kinokuniya’s website notes that their online prices may differ from in-store. I suppose I’ll have to check these prices next time I’m at Kinokuniya and let you know :)

Featherheart Books: a new independent bookstore

If an indie store with a more curated selection of books is what you are after, or if you want to support a local business - you should check out Featherheart Books, which only just opened at the beginning of October 2026. As far as I know, this is the only indie English-language bookstore in Tokyo so I’m very glad it opened. One half of the shelves are dedicated to fiction, where they stock a big range of what’s popular. But I also quite like their eclectic selection of classics and non-fiction, which I had a bit more of a curated feel.

Featherheart also hosts events, which can be a great way to connect with your fellow book-lovers.

As an independent bookstore, to be honest I assumed they would be charging a bit of a premium (that I don’t mind paying!) compared to the big bookstore chains. But actually their prices are the same or cheaper compared to Kinokuniya and Maruzen. The only downside of course is that their selection is smaller - if you had a specific book in mind, you can see the current inventory on their website.

Featherheart Books is located an 8-minute walk from Hatagaya station on the Keio Line, a suburb just west of Shinjuku.

Infinity Books: the biggest second-hand English bookstore

If you’re looking to save money and are after some second-hand books, Infinity Books is the biggest bookstore in Tokyo that is dedicated to second-hand books in English. I visited it once when I moved here back in 2022, and I think I am due for a re-visit (after which I will update this page with some photos).

I’ll admit I think second-hand bookstores can be a bit of a hit or miss. Sometimes people give up all their books when they have to move so there can be some good gems, but other times you might just give up the books you didn’t really like, and so that’s reflected by what you see up on the shelves (i.e. there’s not a lot of “good” stuff). And it probably tends more towards older classic books (which are in much higher supply) than newer titles. From what I recall, it was pretty cheap though!

The other downside is that I think the owner smokes, or they have a smoking-allowed policy (which is kind of a weird for a bookstore…) so if you are sensitive to that it may not be worth the visit.

Infinity Books is located a 7-minute walk from Asakusa station.

Tokyo Book Swap: second-hand books for free!

A new discovery of mine are the Tokyo Book Swap events that run every couple of months in Meguro. You bring up to five of your own books that you no longer want, and then you can take home up to five books that other people bring. Win-win.

All the books are laid out on tables, and you can browse like you would at a bookstore, except it’s free! My experience with the Book Swap event I attended is that actually, there are some really good books and I was quite surprised with what I managed to pick up.

The good books get taken quite quickly though, so it can become a bit of a battleground that you have to play strategically. You’ll need to lurk near the tables like vultures (use this as time to get to know your fellow book-lovers) and as soon as a new person arrives and donates their books snatch them up gently pick them up before someone else gets to them.

My haul - I had been curious about Iron Window, and someone was giving away their brand-spanking-new unread copy of it

The other benefit of a book swap is that it can be a place to meet other book-loving friends. Especially if you see someone has picked up the book that you brought, it’s really easy to segue that into a little conversation.

Mercari: an underrated selection of second-hand books

Maybe Mercari is not on your radar if you are newer to living in Japan, or maybe it’s not on your radar for books. It’s a huge second-hand marketplace used by Japanese people, like the Japanese equivalent of eBay, and surprisingly there’s a pretty good book selection here as well? Free shipping too. Compared to buying in-person, having a search bar makes it a pretty convenient way to pick up second-hand books if you already had a specific title in mind.

If you’re looking for any popular English book, there are definitely a few titles floating about from my experience. I was considering buying Atomic Habits (I ended up finding a free copy at the book swap instead) and Ulysses by James Joyce which both have multiple copies on there. Even A Court of Thorn and Roses is available for any romantasy lovers.

Those sort of books tend to go for up to 3500 yen or more brand new, and you can usually get them around 1000 - 2000 yen on Mercari so it’s a pretty good deal (and some of them are in really good condition as well). Usually it will pay to be a bit strategic - you can “like” listings and wait for their price to go down, or you can attempt to haggle (with varying results) with the sellers via their price negotiation tool. I have had some success with buying 2 books off of one seller and getting a small discount from that.

BOOKOFF: a Japanese second-hand chain

BOOKOFF is a chain of second-hand stores (including the suspiciously named HARDOFF) that technically can also stock English language books? I’ll admit the ones I have been to have been in fairly suburban areas of Tokyo so there really isn’t much of a selection available (if any). From what I see online, the BOOKOFF Nishi-Gotanda store (西五反田店) may have the best selection. The English language books are quite cheap (up to 500 yen) so it may be a better deal than heading to Mercari, but it may be harder to find exactly what you are looking for.

The best BOOKOFF to go to is probably the one closest to your home though, so I’d recommend starting there.

Otherwise, BOOKOFF PLUS Nishigotanda is located a 4 minute walk from Gotanda station on the Yamanote line. I’ll have to visit it sometime and report back.

Daikanyama T-Site: for an artsy vibe

A little different from the other bookstores on this list, but if you want the pleasure of browsing fancy architectural or creative books, the T-Site bookstore in Daikanyama is a great place to hang out.

They don’t stock much in the way of fiction, but they had books on art, hiking, van life, and even a section on cars and motorcycles.

They even have a real car in the store too

It’s a 6-minute walk from Daikanyama station on the Toyoko line, or a 13-minute walk from Naka-meguro station on the metro line (or sometimes I’ll even walk over from Shibuya station). You can see more photos in my post on Daikanyama T-Site.

Your local library: an option depending on where you live

So this page is mostly about buying books, but borrowing can be pretty good too. You probably have a local library near you - although their selection of English books may be a bit questionable. However, you won’t really know unless you check it out, and actually I was quite surprised by the variety that my local library stocked, so I would recommend you go check out yours if you live nearby.

Generally speaking, libraries require you to be a resident of area the library is in, but not all! For example the Minato City Libraries, which is said to have one of the biggest English language collections, only requires you to be living in the Tokyo 23 wards to be eligible to borrow their books. If you don’t mind making a visit out there every 2 - 3 weeks to return books, this can be a pretty good option as well.

Jinbocho book town: possibly overrated

A final honourable mention goes to Jinbocho’s book town, famous for having over 130 bookstores in the area. Most of these stores focus on a specific niche, and mostly only stock Japanese books - so although it may be worth checking out if you are interested in Japanese books specifically, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it otherwise.

One notable store is Kitazawa Bookstore which sells a variety of second-hand English/foreign language books. However rather than it being a “cheap” second-hand bookstore, it’s more like a store that sells rare editions of second-hand stuff. As a random example, one of the books I saw was an edition from 1821 and the price of the book was a staggering 50,000 yen. It was titled “Recherches sur la population” which translates to “Research on Population” in French (thrilling stuff).

I think it would be very interesting if you are into more classic books, especially non-fiction. But if you are just looking for the average fiction book published in the last 50 or so years, this is probably not the place for it!

Kitazawa Books is located only a 1-minute walk from Jinbocho station. Jinbocho is also known for its curry, so if you do visit, you could pair it with lunch at Curry Bondy.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

Mt Shirouma-dake: a 2-day hike from Hakuba

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 05:28:38 GMT

Mt Shirouma-dake (白馬岳, shirouma-dake) is a 2932m peak located in the Northern Alps of Japan, right above the village of Hakuba. With a hiking course of around 12 - 14 hours, it can be done as a long day hike for those with endurance, or more commonly with a stay at the Hakuba Sanso lodge near the summit. Mt Shirouma-dake is one of the more popular hikes in the Northern Alps, and after hiking this mountain I can see why. The trailhead is fairly accessible, the ridgeline views from partway up the mountain are amazing, and the hiking course is not so challenging if you spread it out over 2 days.

My hike began at the Tsugaike Ropeway, used by skiers in winter but also a convenient way for hikers to be speedily transported up to an elevation of 1900m in summer (I see this quite a lot in Japan - it's a win-win that we can re-use infrastructure set up for skiers like this).

The journey is split up over a 20-minute gondola ride, and then a shorter 5-minute ride up on the cablecar.

The gondolas start as early as 7am in summer, but on the weekday that I went, they only start operating at 8am, so I was finally ready to begin my hike around 8:40am.

As well as being the entry point for hikers, some visitors use the ropeway to visit the Tsugaike Nature Park, a 5km walking course that starts at the same location.

This building is the entrance to the nature park.

For hikers, you'll want to head past this sign marked with red tape.

Basically it's warning you to be very well-prepared, as beyond this point is a proper hiking course.

The first 45 minutes are all in tree cover, but pretty quickly you pop out above the tree line.

I had a bit of fun doing some birdwatching. Excitingly, I spotted a new species - a red-flanked bluetail.

It was a bit cloudy, but in the distance I could also see out to Mt Shirouma-dake.

A very impressive-looking peak.

For a short while you get to enjoy a boardwalk course.

And then out ahead is the first peak of the day, Mt Norikura (a 2469m peak not to be confused with the 3026m Mt Norikura).

The path up to the top is visible in the middle-right of the photo

I also spotted a coal tit, which I have seen quite a few times on hikes before, but these are probably the clearest photos I have gotten of them yet ✨

The climb up to Mt Norikura is over huge boulders with occasional circles spray-painted to mark your way.

And looking back down to the boardwalk trail below - what a view!

And then finally, it was up to Mt Norikura. A fairly nondescript peak, save for a huge stone cairn.

And beyond Mt Norikura lies the next peak of the day, Funakoshi-no-kashira (船越の頭). Bit of a mouthful, really. But before that, the course takes you on a loop around the Hakuba Oike (oike literally meaning "large lake").

A Camberwell beauty or キベリタテハ

I usually get a lot of konnichiwas from hikers (as it's custom to greet each other on the trails in Japan), but in a first for me, on this hike I even got annyeonghaseyo'd. I passed by quite a few Korean and Taiwanese hikers on this hike, so I suppose it's a bit more of a famous peak even overseas.

After a quick break at the tables outside the Oike Sanso Lodge, I pressed on. For those having a later start on day 1, the Oike lodge is a pretty good place to stop as it's only a couple of hours from the trailhead.

Around here I got dissed by a Korean grandpa (fun fact - the Japanese use the same word, ディスる) who told me I looked very tired 😭 climbing is hard work, ok!

Heading onwards from the peak of Funakoshi-no-kashira I got what is one of the more iconic views from this hike.

Lovely

And in the far distance, the pointy peak of Mt Yari.

Just in the middle of the frame in the far back

There were some pesky clouds hanging about the peak of Mt Shirouma-dake, but it was still pretty exciting to start to see it come closer and closer.

The second peak of the day was Mt Korenge (小蓮華山).

I didn't realise it at the time, but this is actually the highest elevation peak in Niigata prefecture. It's rather interesting if you look on a map - the town of Hakuba is in Nagano, but climbing up to this ridgeline you'll be at the intersection of Niigata, Nagano and Toyama prefectures. Mt Korenge sits on the border between Niigata and Nagano, while Mt Shirouma-dake sits on the border of Toyama and Nagano.

Mt Korenge is also home to a headless Buddha statue (oh no).

Plus a sword, which is some sort of religious object.

Japanese religions love their swords

Beyond Mt Korenge is the final ridgeline hike up to Mt Shirouma-dake.

And speaking of prefectural borders, there was also a signpost marking the exact point of the Toyama - Nagano - Niigata intersection.

The Mikunisakai (三国境) or three-province border

Of course, today I was heading on towards Mt Shirouma-dake, but if you head down the third path towards Mt Yukikura, you can traverse the 44km Tsugami Shindo (栂海新道) route all the way to the Sea of Japan. Mt Yukikura is also one of the Two Hundred Famous Mountains of Japan.

I'll have to come back and do that another time!

Quite hard to make out in the photo, but the sea is out in the distance there

The final climb up to Mt Shirouma-dake's peak gets a bit rocky.

And around 2pm, I made it to the peak of Mt Shirouma-dake.

Elevation 2932m

The peak of Mt Shirouma-dake is visible from the village of Hakuba below, and if you've ever looked at their kanji - Mt Shirouma's 白馬岳 and Hakuba's 白馬 - you'll notice they are actually exactly the same, just with different pronunciations. Although Shirouma is the official name of the mountain, some locals call the mountain Hakuba-dake, and disagree with the "Shirouma" pronunciation. This also explains why the hut at the summit (started and run by locals) is named Hakuba Sanso and not Shirouma Sanso. Maybe as a concession to that, the peak marker also has "Mt Hakubadake" in brackets.

There is also a big stone plinth at the summit which has been up here since 1941. How did this get up here, you might ask? It wasn't by helicopter - a porter named Komiyama Masashi (小宮山正) carried the 188kg load up on his back. (If you scroll down here there are some pictures).

The metal plate on the plinth is used to point out all the peaks in a 360-degree view, although most of the place names are too weathered today to quite make out.

And for some reason, everyone is jamming their coins in there

The summit was quite windy, so after only a short break to take some pictures, it was onwards towards the Hakuba Sanso lodge, which is only a short descent down from the peak.

Staying at the Hakuba Sanso Lodge

The Hakuba Sanso lodge is Japan's largest mountain hut, and can house up to a whopping 800 hikers. It's spread out across a couple of different buildings, the first being the check-in building, marked with a sign saying 受付.

You should have gotten a confirmation email with your booking number, so you'll need to provide this to the lady behind the counter and she'll let you know your room.

I always opt to get the dinner option when I stay at mountain huts, so I also got handed a dinner ticket - usually huts have multiple dinner slots as they can't feed all the guests at one time - plus a free sachet of Amino Vital.

I think it's supposed to be good for muscle recovery, you just pour all the powder in your mouth and then follow it up with some water.

I think the lodgings are spread out across two buildings, but I was housed in the same one as the dinner room which made things convenient.

Shoes off here - there's a plastic bag you can put your shoes in, and then there's a storage rack for them in your room. There are outdoor slippers and indoor slippers here you can use in the meantime.

The next day's weather forecast

The Hakuba Sanso lodge has a long history, and this year was its 120th anniversary. They even had a little history room with some old photos.

Hikers climbing up the Daisekkei, sometime between the 1920s and 1940s

Each room has a number and is named after a place in the Alps, and I coincidentally ended up in the Daisekkei room. I mention it more in the hiking course section below, but the Daisekkei snowfield is another one of the popular routes to climb up Mt Shirouma-dake.

Since it was a Thursday night it wasn't too crowded, so there were 3 women including me in the room.

Views from the window

All the futons are stacked in the corner, and it's up to you to get them out and figure out your sleeping arrangements. Judging by the number of mats available (six), if the room was at full capacity the mats would cover the entirety of the tatami flooring, so you are in very close quarters with your neighbours.

You'll get the futon base, blanket on top, and a pillow

They don't provide any sort of mesh covers for the bedding, so if that makes you uncomfortable, you can bring a lightweight sleeping bag liner and pillowcase from home.

The hut also provides free drinking water from some of the taps, and the toilets even had bidets. Although I've had better mountain hut setups than here (where you can get a tiny bit more privacy - at the very least a divider between you and your neighbour's face) the toilet situation is pretty good.

Then it was time for dinner!

Today's menu was pork steak, plus unlimited refills of rice and the tonjiru soup.

And after a quick look outside at the sunset (it was pretty cold and windy), I settled in for the night with my Kindle.

Day 2: Hiking back down to Tsugaike

Although I had planned to sleep in until 6am, the power came on at 5am, and there was a 5:30am announcement over the loudspeakers for breakfast so there's not too much chance of a sleep-in. I skipped breakfast and started my hike around 5:40am.

It didn't seem to be a particularly popular time to set out, and I was completely alone up on the ridgeline for the first hour of my hike (an amazing feeling, really).

And as I approached the peak of Mt Shirouma-dake once more, I somehow managed to perfectly time my hike to watch the sun peek out over the sea of clouds.

There was such a pretty gradient going on in the other direction too.

While hiking up the previous day, I had been thinking to myself how the end of September / early October is such an underrated time for hiking in the Alps. Around the middle of September is a holiday period known as Silver Week where you should really avoid the mountains if you hate crowds. But once that week is over and with the cooler temperatures setting in, Japanese hikers start heading to the lower-elevation mountains. Which makes it a great time to hike the Alps if you enjoy a less-crowded hiking experience.

But I just about ate my words on day 2, because the winds up near the peak were bitterly cold. I had only brought along fingerless gloves, and my windbreaker/raincoat was of the ultralight variety with no pockets. So I was trying to weirdly jam in my fingers underneath the front of my jacket, but then of course, I want to take photos, so then my fingers get cold again, and so on. So maybe I'd caveat it by saying early October is a great time if you come sufficiently prepared.

(Lesson learnt for next time - bring proper gloves. I was glad I brought along my beanie, though!)

Once I was past the peak, the cold winds abated a bit, and I was really enjoying myself. There was just something really comfortable about hiking Mt Shirouma-dake. The portion past the peak here was a really nice ridgeline walk (not too steep) and the hike took me 11 hours over 2 days so each day felt really manageable time-wise. Not to mention I stayed in the hut, so my pack wasn't particularly heavy.

Although no one caught up from behind me, pretty soon I started to see hikers heading up from the opposite direction. If I had to guess, maybe they spent a night at the Oike hut by the lake, and were going to head up to Mt Shirouma-dake, then turn around and head back down again on the same day.

After a look back to appreciate the peak of Mt Shirouma-dake (which had been partially obscured by clouds on day 1) I continued on with my descent.

And out in the distance, I could see the Hakuba Oike lake come into view.

From this angle you can see it's just a little lake nestled on top of a mountain, how cool is that!

As I got closer to the lake, I nearly saw a tragedy unfold - a lady was in the process of packing away her tent, and I guess removed all the tent pegs but hadn't disassembled the inner body.

And the tent started rolling away towards the lake (uh oh...) but luckily they were able to stop it in time.

By 8am, I was back at the lake. After a breakfast break, I pressed on.

Fun fact - the lake is home to the rare "Hakuba salamander", although I didn't manage to spot any lurking. Mt Shirouma-dake is also supposed to be full of rock ptarmigans but I wasn't fortunate enough to spot any on this hike.

It was nice to get a repeat of all the views I had on day 1 but without any clouds.

I was surprised by how quiet Mt Shirouma had felt when I hiked up on Thursday, but as I began the final descent on Friday there were plenty of people beginning their climb up. I suppose angling for a Friday/Saturday hike is easier for Japanese people than trying to get both Thursday/Friday off.

I finished my hike around 10:30am, and hopped on the ropeway and gondola back down.

All-in-all a lovely hike. I think if you are looking for a more accessible or beginner-friendly 2-day hike in the Northern Alps, this would be the one to pick.

Hiking course options

Mt Shirouma-dake's two most popular trailheads are Sarukura (猿倉登山口) and Tsugaike (栂池登山口). There is also an alternative route via Yari Onsen, which has gained some popularity on social media.

For beginner hikers, or for those hiking later in the season, I would recommend taking the out-and-back route via Tsugaike trailhead (栂池登山口). After getting off the Tsugaike ropeway, you'll traverse a series of small peaks - Mt Norikura and Mt Korenge. 3 hours into the hike you'll pass the Oike Sanso hut, where you can stay on day 1 if you've had a later start.

Otherwise, if you have an early start on day 1, you can head all the way to the Hakuba Sanso just beyond the peak of Mt Shirouma-dake. On day 2, you'll take the same route you climbed back down again.

Note: the AllTrails course linked continues on to Sarukura as I couldn't find an equivalent out-and-back on AllTrails.

The more famous and iconic climb up Mt Shirouma-dake is via the Sarukura trailhead (猿倉登山口). You'll head up the Daisekkei ("great snow valley"), a permanent snowfield which provides one of the only opportunities to enjoy snow during summer in Japan. In this case, hikers will usually climb up Sarukura, and then descend out the other side via Tsugaike.

The one thing to keep in mind with the Daisekkei route is that it does require crampons. Some basic ones can be rented from the Sarukura lodge for 1500 yen, without any reservations required. If you return the crampons at either the Sarukura lodge, Hakuba lodge or the Oike lodge, you will get 500 yen back.

There is also a risk of rocks hurtling down the valley, so bringing a helmet is a good idea. The Daisekkei also does partially melt partway through the summer season, at which point the route becomes unsafe to cross and is closed off.

For a 2-day hike, as there are no huts mid-way up the course, you will need to climb all the way to Hakuba Sanso. This means you need to have an early start on day 1, possibly requiring a stay in Hakuba / Sarukura the night before you begin your hike.

Note: the AllTrails link has you doing the course in reverse - starting at Tsugaike and ending at Sarukura. I would not recommend this, as it is easier to climb up the snow field than to climb down.

Hiking via the Yari onsen isn't one of the main courses, but for better or worse it has gained a bit of popularity on social media for its onsen tucked away on the side of the mountain. The other highlight of the trail is that you get to traverse the Hakuba Three Peaks (Hakuba Sanzan) of Mt Shirouma-dake, Mt Shakushi and Mt Hakubayari.

The YAMAP course I have linked has it as a 2-day course, starting at Sarukura trailhead and hiking up to the Hakuba lodge on day 1. On day 2 you traverse Mt Shakushi and Mt Hakubayari, before arriving at the Yari onsen around 9:30am. It seems you can enjoy a soak even if you are passing through (2000 yen) so you can enjoy that before continuing with your descent. However, the YAMAP course is also nearly 10 hours on day 2, so it may be more reasonable to break this up into a 3-day hike, with another night's stay at the Yari Onsen hut, before descending back to Sarukura on day 3.

If you want to use the onsen, note the hut closes towards the end of September. Unfortunately it seems people have been using it outside of the hut's operating season leading to damage, so the hut has had to post a warning asking people not to use it in the off-season.

All the route options listed at the Hakuba Sanso lodge - Daisekkei was closed off for the year when I visited, and Yari is marked as requiring a helmet and with risk of rockfall.

The other minor trailhead is the Renge Onsen (蓮華温泉). You can do an out-and-back from Renge or a 3-day, 32km loop course hike.

When to hike Mt Shirouma-dake

Tsugaike

If you are hiking from the Tsugaike ropeway side, the snow-free hiking season for Mt Shirouma-dake is from August - September, which is quite a late start for the Alps of Japan. The steep rocky bit between the boardwalk section (Tengu-bara) and Mt Norikura sees snow persist until the end of July. This website notes that if you are trying to climb in late July, you will still need crampons to make it up and down the steep snow.

In 2026 I hiked Mt Shirouma-dake on October 1 - 2 without snow, but it starts to get a bit hand-wavey in October as to when the snow will set in in the Alps. This year, the hut stopped operating on the 18th of October so that is the hard cutoff if you are planning on doing this as a 2-day hike with a hut stay.

Sarukura / Daisekkei

Starting from the Sarukura trailhead, you will be intentionally hiking across a snowfield, so you are probably not as worried about waiting for the snow-free season. This hike can be done during July - August. The end date varies year on year, as the Daisekkei route is closed off if the snow starts to melt (as dangerous ravines open up). In 2026, it closed on the 31st of August.

Public transport access

For those hiking up the Tsugaike side, your starting point will be the Tsugaike Gondola lift station. Starting from Tokyo, the earliest Shinkansen is the 6:28am leaving from Tokyo station, getting to Nagano station at 8:03am.

From there, you can get the Alpico express bus (see 2026 timetable here) from outside the east exit of Nagano station. The 8:20am bus gets to the Tsugaike Kogen bus stop at 9:52am. The bus doesn't require a prior reservation.

Factoring in the gondola trip times (40+ minutes), you can expect to finally start your hike at close to 11am. This is quite late in the morning - and you won't be able to reach all the way to the peak of Mt Shirouma-dake in time, so your main option will be to hike 3.5 hours to the Oike Sanso and stay there for the night, and then do the out-and-back to Shirouma on day 2. Alternatively, right after you get off the gondola there is a hut, so that could be an option if you arrive later in the afternoon.

If you don't mind sleeping in a train or bus, there are a couple of overnight options:

Alpico runs a night bus from Shinjuku which leaves Busta Shinjuku at 11:05pm and arrives at Tsugaike Kogen at 6:04am.
Mainichi Alpen-go (毎日あるぺん号) also runs an overnight bus for hikers that leaves Shinjuku at 11pm and stops at Tsugaike Kogen at around 5:40am.

The ropeway doesn't start operating until 7am in summer, so you will have a bit of waiting around to do after you get off the bus. But this will give you enough time to reach the Hakuba Sanso on day 1.

To get to the Sarukura trailhead, you'll first need to get a Shinkansen to Nagano, and then the same Alpico express bus as above to Hakuba station. Alternatively, you can get a highway bus direct from Shinjuku to Hakuba.

Then from Hakuba you need to get the Alpico Sarukura Line (猿倉線) to Sarukura, which takes about 30 minutes and costs 2000 yen one-way (bookings required).

Getting the first train out of Tokyo, the earliest bus you can get to Sarukura will be the 12:15pm, which is too late to start your hike. So your main option will be to either a) sleep in Hakuba the night before so you can get the earliest bus in the morning or b) sleep at the Sarukura Sanso at the trailhead.

To skip sleeping anywhere altogether, your main option will be to get a night bus. Like I mentioned in the above section for Tsugaike, the Mainichi Alpen-go (毎日あるぺん号) runs a bus that leaves Shinjuku at 11pm and gets you to the Sarukura trailhead at around 5:15am.

Whether you are hiking via Sarukura or Tsugaike, the recommended descent route would then be via Tsugaike. If you are going via the Yari Onsen, you will descend to Sarukura, from where you can get another reserved bus back to Hakuba.

Descending via Tsugaike though, the main thing to factor in is that you will want to give yourself an hour between when you finish the hike and when you plan to get on the bus back. The ropeway + gondola trip will take 40 minutes, and the ropeway also only runs every 20 minutes.

Similar to coming to Tsugaike, you can get the Alpico Nagano–Hakuba express bus without a reservation, and it runs every 2 - 3 hours in the afternoon.

Alternatively there is an Alpico highway bus that runs directly from Tsugaike Kogen back to Busta Shinjuku if you don't want to have to deal with train transfers. Usually these require bookings but if there is a spare seat available you can probably book it last minute.

Or if you got the Mainichi night bus package, they do have options to do a round-trip instead of a one-way.

Taking the Tsugaike gondola

If you're taking the Tsugaike gondola, I recommend buying the tickets online from their website, which you can do as late as the morning of your hike. Then when you arrive, head to the ticket machine inside the building, scan the QR code and get a paper ticket.

The machine is inside the building. The ropeway was operating from 8am on this day and by 7:30am the doors were open

Otherwise you'll need to line up for tickets, and with a separate line for the gondola after that, you'll end up with a bit more of a delayed start.

Once you've got your ticket, head up the slope outside the building, and there is a separate line for the gondola here.

Booking the Hakuba Sanso Lodge

The Hakuba Sanso lodge has a very convenient online booking system, although there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

You can reschedule your booking up until the day of your check-in, which is very convenient in case the weather forecast doesn't look great. However, there is a non-refundable 3000 yen fee per person if you cancel completely. This kind of sucks, but actually most other huts in Japan will definitely not let you cancel the day-of, and will charge you a % fee if you cancel the day before. So this is just the price you pay for Hakuba Sanso's flexibility. Also, each time you reschedule it seems they re-charge your credit card (and then refund you later) which is kind of annoying but just a quirk to keep in mind that you might end up with multiple charges at once.
When booking as a solo person, you'll have a choice between being placed in a small tatami room or in a longer hallway type setup. Personally I chose the tatami with the hopes of having the room to myself if it turned out to be a quieter night, but it ended up being at 3/6 capacity which was not too bad. If you are a woman, it might be better to go for the tatami room (assuming it's the same price) as lodges generally put women together. Which then should hopefully make for a quieter night as generally it's the men who tend to be the loud snorers.
If you are coming as a couple, it's actually quite easy to get a private 2-person room, and this doesn't cost too much extra. This is quite rare for Japanese mountain huts, which mostly house you in larger rooms with multiple people, and usually you have to pay quite the premium for privacy. So it'll be worth trying to snag this one. When you make your booking, the private rooms will probably be 100% booked out, but they have a waitlist system and it was quite easy to end up with the private room each time I tried. (I was originally going to do this hike with my husband, but bad weather kept getting in the way, so I had plenty of experience re-booking).

Car access details

Tsugaike Kogen carpark

If you are hiking via the Tsugaike Ropeway, the closest carpark is the Tsugaike Central carpark which is a paid carpark costing 500 yen per day. There is a separate free carpark, the Dai 2 carpark which is a 7-minute walk uphill from the ropeway. This is about a 4 - 4.5 hour drive from Tokyo.

I chose to sleep in my car at the Dai 2 free carpark the night before my hike, on a Wednesday night. Having hiked Mt Tate the day before, where there were plenty of other people sleeping in their cars with me, I had assumed Mt Shirouma-dake would provide a similar experience. But actually, the carpark was pretty empty (and dark) so it turned out to be a little bit nerve-wracking.

Not to mention the nearest toilet is at the ropeway which is a 7-minute walk away. If you are new to car-camping (or are concerned about safety generally) and you are coming at a quiet time of year, I would recommend sleeping instead at the nearest Michi-no-eki rather than staying here, although the downside is that it is about a 20-minute drive away. Or possibly you could cough up the 500 yen fee per day and stay at the carpark right next to the ropeway.

Doesn't look quite as bad in the daylight, though

The Dai 2 carpark on Friday morning - a lot more cars, although not completely full

I think if you came on a busy weekend though, it probably wouldn't really be a problem. If anything, sleeping in your car will probably help guarantee you a spot in the free parking area.

One downside - the long walk up the hill after you finish your hike.

When I hiked on a Thursday at the beginning of October, neither carpark filled up on the first day, although they were quite full on the Friday morning when I descended.

The central paid carpark on Thursday morning - so empty!

Friday morning - pretty full

Sarukura carpark

Until 2024, it seems you could park at the Sarukura trailhead itself, but the carpark has since been closed off due to road damage. The nearest carparks are now near Happo-One (e.g. Happo 3rd Parking lot).

From there it's a short walk to the Happo Bus Terminal where you can get the same Alpico Sarukura Line up to Sarukura as I mentioned earlier in the post.

If you end your hike at Sarukura, there will be buses on the same line heading in the other direction (so you'll need a return booking).

If you are ending at Tsugaike, you will then need to get a bus from Tsugaike to Happo, which won't require a booking.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

The Tainted Cup

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Book review for The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I rated it 4.5 stars.

This fantasy/mystery novel was the 2025 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and a rather fun romp of a book that I absolutely sped through. It’s from the perspective of Din, who works for an eccentric investigator named Ana, as they set out to solve a gruesome murder mystery.

The world building for this book is great. The pair live in a world where humans augment their abilities (e.g. to have super strength, or perfect recall memory) so they can be better employable in their work for the Empire. There’s a darker side to this though, as the augmentations leads to shorter lifespans or mental health problems as the human body can’t tolerate the strain of their increased powers long-term. As a result, it’s the lower classes that tend to go undergo this sort of augmentation, while the rich elite only use it to look really pretty at no expense to their health.

Then the other part of the world is this Attack on Titan-esque setup, where the Empire builds its cities in concentric rings. Those that live closest to the outermost wall are at risk of these immense sea creatures known as titans leviathans breaking through.

We don’t get too much of a backstory for Din, aside from the fact that he sends all his money back home to his family (but curiously, he doesn’t really seem to care that much about them). There’s also like one drop of a romance subplot so it would be interesting to see if his backstory and/or the romance is expanded upon in any way in the sequels.

Overall it’s a fun book where you can switch your brain off and enjoy it for what it is. And much needed for me after sleepwalking my way through two translations of the The Odyssey.

And finally, back on the Hugo Awards - although I didn’t set out to do it on purpose, I’ve now found myself having read 7 of the last 8 winners. As it’s an award won by (essentially) a popular vote, it does have a fairly good handle on what book is doing well in a given year, and I’ve yet to give one of its books below a 4 star rating. I saw one reviewer complain that the Hugo Awards as a result don’t really give its awards to books that are helping to progress the genre or do something new. I guess there are pros/cons to a popular vote process - I’ve seen some awards choose via a judging panel, and sometimes books chosen are a bit niche or you can’t quite understand why they’ve won to begin with. Maybe the best process is some sort of hybrid between the two?

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

The Odyssey

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 12:05:24 GMT

Book review for The Odyssey by Homer. I rated it 5 stars.

In anticipation of the release of the new Christopher Nolan movie, I decided to give The Odyssey a read. Even if you've never read the poem, it's one of those stories that a lot of people are roughly familiar with just through pop culture references or from school. And I specifically say "a lot" and not "everyone" because I was surprised to meet at least two people recently who had never heard of it (I suppose it depends on your age, or maybe where you grew up?)

In short, Odysseus (sometimes translated as Ulysses) goes off to spend 10 years fighting in the Trojan War - chronicled in another poem The Iliad - and then The Odyssey covers his 10-year journey to get back home. The stories were first passed down orally, before possibly being written down during the 8th century BC by a Greek man named Homer - although scholars debate whether he even existed as a person at all.

Over the following 28 centuries (!) scholars preserved and translated the poem many times over. I was curious what the oldest surviving complete copy of The Odyssey is, and it's a copy from the 10th century stored in the Laurentian Medici Library in Florence. (Side note - I had a phase as a teenager where I was obsessed with Assassin's Creed 2 which features the Medici family, so I immediately recognised the library's use of the Medici family crest).

The translation of The Odyssey you read will really impact your opinion of it, so I decided to pick up two separate translations.

The first was the 1965 translation by Richmond Lattimore, which is described as being "faithful" to the original Homeric Greek. Honestly speaking, it reminds me of the sort of book you are forced to read in English class in high school, or possibly the kind where you skip reading it altogether and just go to SparkNotes to find the chapter summaries.

And then the second copy I picked up was the recent 2017 translation by Emily Wilson. This one got a lot of media hype - Wilson was the first woman to to do a full translation of The Odyssey into English, and Christopher Nolan reportedly relied on this translation for his movie. Wilson notes in her foreword that she specifically tried to go for a very "ordinary" level of English in her translation, as this is how the original text would have actually read (or heard, actually, since it was first passed down orally). If you were just looking to enjoy a good story, I would wholeheartedly recommend the Emily Wilson translation. It's straightforward, readable, easy to get through - exactly as she intended.

I opted to read the book a chapter at a time, doing a chapter of Lattimore's first before then repeating the same chapter with Wilson's. Generally I'd miss things from Lattimore's version that would suddenly become a lot more clearer after I read Wilson's. I wouldn't recommend this method though, as it took me a long 2 months to finally finish the books (after a lot of procrastinating, and multiple other books in between).

The only criticism I would have with Wilson's that the prose occasionally almost reads too simple. As one example from the beginning of Chapter 6 to show the difference between the writing styles:

"This people used to live in Hyperia, a land of dancing. But their mighty neighbours, the Cyclopes, kept looting them, and they could not hold out." - Wilson translation

"[...] the Phaiakian men, who formerly lived in the spacious land, Hypereia, next to the Cyclopes, who were men too overbearing, and who had kept harrying them, being greater in strength." - Lattimore Translation

But on the other hand the Lattimore translation, even if it might use prettier words, is generally harder to wrap your head around so I can forgive Wilson's translation for that.

One of the other ways that Emily Wilson distinguishes herself from earlier translations was clearly point out slaves for what they were, rather than softening it to words like "maid" like Lattimore does. Overall, the proper translation of slaves in the book doesn't necessarily make a difference to the story and I'm sure Homer probably didn't care about them being slaves either (if it was just a common feature of society back then) but I suppose as readers in the 21st century we can have a bit more empathy for those side characters.

Before reading The Odyssey I had more of an impression that Odysseus was some sort of noble guy, fighting his way to get home - one of the original guys undergoing the "Hero's journey" story template that you learn about in school. It seems this is a pretty normal misconception to have, and through reading the book you come to realise that Odysseus is pretty flawed. He's arrogant, violent, vengeful and not really someone you can look at in the 21st century as anything resembling a good guy. As one example, for funsies he and his crew sack a city, kill the men and take the women as slaves.

And so I don't walk away from the book thinking to myself "yay, go Odysseus!". And if you were to take this story at face-value and imagine it was something that was written and published today, it doesn't have that much value as a story. But before you go throwing stones at me - of course if you think about the impact this has had on literature and culture generally, the merit of this poem is huge. As an easy example, the word "odyssey" is literally a regular word found in the dictionary to mean an arduous journey.

I will leave detailing the impact of The Odyssey to scholars and people much more knowledgable than me. But for recent literary references that come to mind, there's the James Joyce novel Ulysses (a somewhat modern retelling that I am yet to read) and the popular fantasy book Circe (a re-imagining of the goddess Circe's story, who Odysseus meets on his journey home). Circe then seemingly kicked off its own boom of books in a similar genre, with more recent titles like A Thousand Ships and Ariadne also covering retelling of Greek myths from a woman's perspective. As a fun bit of trivia, the iconic quote about Helen of Troy whose beauty "launched a thousand ships" (kickstarting the Trojan War after she was abducted) wasn't even from Homer but from a 1604 play called Doctor Faustus.

And finally, back to the Christopher Nolan movie which prompted me to read the original poem. Although it was released internationally back in mid-July making this rather old news, the release here in Japan was delayed until mid-September (Japan likes to prioritise their own domestic films rather than sticking to the release schedule of international films).

I was quite excited by the idea of watching this in proper IMAX since we have one of those screens in Tokyo, but I really underestimated how competitive it would be. Add in the fact that I was busy for a weekend or two, and before I knew it we were in mid-October...

Sadly they stopped doing night-time screenings of Odyssey in IMAX altogether (rude) in favour of other newly released films like the Resident Evil reboot, so my husband and I resigned ourselves to going for a screening on a regular display.

Which to be fair, was still very visually beautiful. As for my opinions on the movie :

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

Mt Tate: a day hike in the Northern Alps

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:36:49 GMT

Mt Tate (立山, tate-yama) is one of the most-visited peaks in the Northern Alps of Japan, popular with hikers and sightseeing tourists alike. It's known as one of Japan's Three Holy Mountains (along with Mt Fuji and Mt Haku) and was a place where pilgrims would come to pay their respects by climbing up to its 3015m peak.

These days, the hike up Mt Tate is made much easier thanks to the Kurobe Alpine Route, with a combination of buses, ropeways and cable cars taking hikers straight up to the Murodo plateau at an elevation of 2450m.

Making the 4-hour drive out from Tokyo to Nagano, I then had another 90 minutes of public transport connections before I could finally begin my hike. As popular as Mt Tate is, this was the main reason why I had put off hiking this mountain for so long.

A walk across the Kurobe Dam

Heading up on the cable car

Jammed in like sardines on the ropeway

Mt Tate is also listed as one of Japan's 100 Famous Mountains. Even at the time of the book's publishing in 1964, author Kyuya Fukada notes that Mt Tate was well on the way to becoming a tourist trap. But what a gorgeous tourist trap it is.

The start of the hike at Murodo

The peak of Mt Tate can be accessed as a direct out-and-back taking under 4 hours, but I chose to do the slightly extended 6.5-hour loop hike to make the most of my day.

As you begin to climb, you get great views below to the Murodo Plateau.

I got lucky with the weather - no fog, no clouds - and so the views of this plateau were so good. You get to see it for the entire hike, so I took so many photos of it.

Fukada also mentions that Murodo is home to Japan's oldest mountain lodge, which was built in 1695. It seems to have closed in the 1980s though, although the building itself has been preserved and is still standing.

I think possibly it's that little wooden building on the left there. I didn't really walk around the plateau on the day so I don't have a close-up photo of it.

Hiking up, the first waypoint I passed was the Ichinokoshi hut (一ノ越山荘).

From here you can get views out to the neighbouring peaks in the Northern Alps like Mt Yari and Mt Kasa.

Mt Yari, the pointy peak on the middle-right, Mt Kasa the rounded pointy guy on the far right

There was also an alpine accentor strutting about, in search of crumbs of food left behind by hikers.

From here is a steep and rocky climb up to the first of Mt Tate's three peaks, known as Mt Oyama.

A look back down to the hut.

Close to the first peak of Mt Tate is the Oyama Shrine.

Legend goes it was first climbed in 701 by a 16-year-old, guided by a white hawk and a black bear.

The peak itself was rather crowded, so I gave up on any attempts of getting a clear photo without people in it.

Nearly everyone was wearing proper hiking gear but I was impressed by this lady who had come up here in jeans

I suppose with a shrine close to the summit, this is the official peak of Mt Tate. And if you are using an app like YAMAP to track your hiking, hiking to here will count for you having "climbed" Mt Tate. But at 3003m elevation it's not quite the highest point on this course.

From here I headed back down to the shrine, and continued along with my loop hike, which stretches out along a long ridgeline.

The Oyama Shrine

After a short while I came to my second peak of the day.

Atop a pile of rocks is the peak marker for Mt Onanji (大汝山).

Not a particularly dignified peak marker (more of a sign you can hold up for a photo) but this is the highest point on Mt Tate at an elevation of 3015m.

A short walk beyond here is the Mt Onanji rest hut (大汝休憩所). I didn't poke my head in since I assumed it was a regular hut, but actually it's like a lunch spot with food and drink.

A lot of mountain huts in Japan tend to have red roofs (I suppose for good visibility) so I thought this one was quite cute with the dual red and blue.

After this it's a bit more of a climb to reach the third peak of the day.

The rockiness of it may look a little imposing (and I even saw a tour guide holding a lady's hand to guide her across) but it's a fairly straightforward climb up.

The third peak of Mt Tate is called Fuji-no-Oritate (富士ノ折立) and is the lowest of the three, at an elevation of 2999m.

I'm not sure if the peak's name has anything to do with Mt Fuji - but you can see it from the peak!

(But you can also see it from the other peaks of Mt Tate).

Gorgeous views down to the plateau below

From here it's one final ridgeline walk - I thought this one was super pretty.

Almost looks like sand

Panorama ✨

Actually while walking along this ridge, I overshot the point where you are supposed to make a left turn to head back down to Murodo (oops).

I think it was some point along this climb up

But then I saw there was one more peak only a 5-minute walk ahead, so I figured I may as well visit it while I was here.

Mt Masago (真砂岳), Elevation 2861m

Then it was time to make the descent back to Murodo, which came with some of my favourite views on the entire hike. I was really glad I did the loop option.

I had come in peak autumn foliage season, so the sides of the mountains were a lovely mix of green and orange.

Before reaching Murodo, you'll also pass by the Raichozawa Campsite (雷鳥沢キャンプ場). It's very cutely named after the Japanese rock ptarmigan.

And then taking a look back at the path I just descended down off of...

Wow! Although I've been hiking for over 4 years in Japan now, I feel like I always miss out on good autumn scenery. It's probably some combination of not doing enough hiking during this time period, not visiting the best spots, or sometimes I do visit but fog would get in the way. So it felt cool to finally get a good dose of it.

I feel like it was even more gorgeous in person - I would put this as one of the top 10 views I have ever seen in my life.

What a nice spot for a tent. In the back are the 3 peaks of Mt Tate

From the campsite it's one final climb back up towards Murodo.

The building for the Raichozawa Hut looks very, very dilapidated and I assumed it was abandoned, but somehow it's still in operation.

I took one final photo of the campsite. What a great view this would be to wake up to.

Along the way back there was also a field of steam vents, known as the Jigokudani (Hell valley).

They have a warning system set up for the volcanic gas in this area.

I found it quite amusing, but this is the first time I have ever seen "Emma" written in English on Japanese signage (since it's not really a Japanese word). In this case they translated エンマ to be Emma.

I suppose with smoking craters comes hot water, so there was even an onsen building up here - the Mikurigaike Onsen. It's notable for being the highest-elevation hot spring in Japan. Day use is apparently a very reasonable 1100 yen.

And then my final bit of sightseeing for the day was passing by the Mikurigaike Pond.

At this point there were plenty of tourists around.

After one final look at the peaks of Mt Tate, and stocking up on the mountain spring water, it was time to take the 90-minute journey back down to my car.

Free drinking water!

Electric bus

Ropeway

Cable car. It's on a very steep incline. I had a front-row view together with an older couple, and as we started our descent the grandpa started to do a squat and was like "I'm ski-jumping" (lol)

A walk back across the Kurobe dam

The final bus back to Ogizawa

Since I wanted to make the most of my long drive from Tokyo, from Mt Tate I drove over to the trailhead for Mt Shirouma-dake (only an hour's drive away) in preparation to hike it the next day.

Overall, although Mt Tate can be a bit of a hassle with all the public transport connections you have to make, it genuinely was such a beautiful mountain that made it all worth it for me! I'd love to come back in another season to enjoy it with different colours.

Hiking course options

This was the course I took, which I would recommend if you have the time. It's a loop hike covering the three peaks of Mt Tate, and then descending via the Raichozawa Campsite.

The most direct course to the Mt Oyama (3003m elevation) peak of Mt Tate if you're just looking to get a quick hike in. Although it's not the highest peak on the course, it's kind of the "official" peak.

Public transport access

There are two separate routes up to Murodo where you can begin your hike of Mt Tate. In my case, I hiked it from the Nagano prefecture side as this is the best option if you are driving. If you are coming via public transport, it seems the Toyama side is more popular because there are fewer transfers, but the overall costs and times are about the same. Collectively, the entire route (from Toyama -> Murodo -> Nagano) is known as the "Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route". If you wanted, you could go up one side, and then down the other.

If you look at the Alpen Route website there is a rather handy diagram that helps you make sense of it.

Option 1: Tateyama station (Toyama side)

Coming from the Toyama side, you will be looking at 5.5 hours of travel time from Tokyo, costing you approximately 19000 yen one-way.

Tokyo station -> Toyama station via Shinkansen (2 hours, 13,000 yen)
Dentetsu-Toyama station -> Tateyama station via train (1 hour, 1420 yen)
Tateyama station -> Bijodaira via cable car (7 minutes, 1090 yen)
Bijodaira -> Murodo via bus (50 minutes, 3000 yen)

If you leave first thing in the morning from Tokyo, the earliest you can get to Murodo via this approach is 11:50am. An alternative would be to get the Shinkansen the night before, and spend the night at Tateyama station, in which case you can get to Murodo at 8:30am.

Option 2: Ogizawa station (Nagano prefecture)

The bus terminal at Ogizawa station

If you are driving from Tokyo, then it is quicker to use the Ogizawa station route. Otherwise for public transport it seems similar to the Toyama side - it's a total of 5.5 hours and about 19,000 yen coming from Tokyo via public transport.

Tokyo station -> Nagano station via Shinkansen (80 minutes, 8500 yen)
Nagano station -> Ogizawa via express bus (1.5 hours, 4300 yen)
Ogizawa -> Murodo via bus/cable car/ropeway/bus (90 minutes, 6000 yen)

For the final Ogizawa -> Murodo leg, you should buy the tickets for this in advance on their website. Depending on the time of year, the time of the first bus leaving Ogizawa is between 7 and 7:30am. They schedule tickets via time period - i.e. you can buy a "7:30 ticket" or a "8:00 ticket" so it may be worth doing this a little in advance before your trip so you can get the time you want. Then on the day, there are machines where you can scan the QR code and the ticket pops out.

Once you have your ticket, head up to the second floor where you can get in line for the electric bus.

There are quite a few people here, as they put on 4 buses at a time.

If you are in any sort of rush, you will want to:

a) Line up for the bus early.

b) Once you pass through the ticket barrier, try to get on the first of the four buses. Some people want to get a seat so not necessarily everyone beelines it for the first bus.

c) Power-walk across the Kurobe Dam to try and beat the line for the cable car.

It's hard not to get distracted by the views of the dam, though!

Alas, I was distracted so this was the line for the cable car that awaited me

All-in-all though, the cable car and ropeway journeys are quite short, and they have them on continuous loops at these busy peak times so even if the lines seem long, they do move quickly. Within about 90 minutes, you should be able to begin your hike.

Option 3: Direct access via overnight bus

If the idea of doing all these transfers doesn't appeal to you and you don't mind sleeping on buses, you can get the overnight bus to Murodo. This is the most convenient and also the cheapest option if you are coming as a solo traveller and want to do it as a day hike.

There are two bus companies that offer this option:

Maitabi is a company that does a lot of overnight bus trips for hikers across Japan. They pick you up at 11pm from Shinjuku station, and drop you off at Murodo at 7am (or 8am in September). They then pick you back up at 12:30pm, and drop you back off at Shinjuku by 9pm. It costs between 20,000 - 26,000 yen round trip depending on the season.
Kosoku bus: a pretty similar setup to Maitabi. But it seems to be a fair bit more expensive - 28,000 to 30,000 yen round trip.

For both these cases, when I was researching doing this hike at the end of September, they were not running the buses, so I think they only really run on the weekends / at peak season.

The overnight bus makes the 4-hour out-and-back course quite feasible, while it's a bit dicey to do the longer loop hike due to the timings.

Car access details

If you are driving from Tokyo, I would recommend driving to the Nagano side of the mountain to the Ogizawa parking lot, as it's a 4-hour drive. In comparison, the Toyama side is a 5.5 hour drive.

The final 10km (15 minute) drive up to Ogizawa is along a long rural road. Luckily it's not narrow (2 cars can fit) and it's all asphalt in good condition. I mention this because I have seen some really sketchy roads in my time hiking mountains in Japan, but I suppose with the amount of tourists that visit Mt Tate, they have the money to make nice roads. It did turn out to be a rather spooky drive up at night with no other cars around, though. There was a lot of fog on the night I went, so I inched along at quite a slow pace. I ended up seeing a deer, fox and even a tanuki on the drive in (and saw some monkeys on the drive out).

As you drive up the road and approach the parking lot, there will be a turn on the left with a sign that says parking for motorcycles. It's a bit confusing, but if you take that turn, it is actually a free parking lot for cars too.

Ogizawa's free parking lot

If this is full, drive a further minute or two up the road and there is paid parking available at the rate of 1000 yen per 12 hours.

When I arrived at 7pm on a weekday, there were still spots available in the free parking lot. This was sort of the tail-end of the season though (30th of Sept), so I wouldn't be surprised if it fills up earlier in the summer holiday season.

If you are planning to sleep in the carpark, the one downside here is that the toilet block is a 6-minute walk up the road to the bus terminal. There is a path at the far end of the carpark which has a shortcut through the woods up to the bus terminal, or you can walk along the road. There were plenty of other fellow car-sleepers so it felt like a fairly safe spot to sleep.

Once at Ogizawa, you will then need to use the chain of public transport (bus -> cable car -> ropeway -> bus) to finally get up to Murodo, which I have covered in detail in the public transport section above.

When to hike Mt Tate

Mt Tate's hiking season is between July and early October.

Mt Tate's connection with the movie Wolf Children

As a final piece of trivia, while up near Murodo I noticed a couple of references to a Mamoru Hosoda movie called Wolf Children. Although not quite as famous as Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki's works, Hosoda has done a number of popular animated films (most popularly The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and more recently, Belle).

Personally, I loved Wolf Children! It's a rather touching story about two children being raised by a werewolf man and a human mother, and their struggles with trying to find their identity between their wolf and human halves. If you're interested in Japanese or animated films, I would recommend you give it a watch if you haven't already.

In one of the movie's scenes, one of the children Ame joyfully runs up the side of a mountain, coming to a view of a lake.

As it turns out, Mamoru Hosoda grew up in Toyama prefecture, and the visuals for this scene were based on Mikurigaike Pond, which is only a short walk from Murodo.

In the movie the area is depicted as a complete wilderness, while in reality there was a horde of tourists around (myself included) snapping pictures of this lake.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Book review for Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear. I rated it 3.5 stars.

I hated on Atomic Habits when I first read it, as I felt it didn’t quite compare to The Power of Habit. Now doing a re-read 7 years later, I can begrudgingly start to see its merits a bit more.

Atomic Habit does solve the only criticism I had with Power of Habit - that although it does a good job of explaining the science behind habits, it did not have enough actionable advice. Atomic Habits has more than plenty of it, structuring the book’s chapters into the various ways you can start and stop habits.

The author James Clear is quick to thank Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg for his work, and acknowledges that his book builds upon it. It reuses the same “cue - routine - reward” habit loop from Power of Habit, but renames it to “cue - craving - response - reward”.

However where Power of Habit seems to be fairly well-backed by science and research, I got the feeling that Atomic Habits is a bit more “woo-woo” with its advice (for want of a better word). One of the early claims James Clear makes in the book is that habit formation is tied to your identity. If you tell yourself you are a smoker and give yourself negative self-talk like “I can’t quite, it’s too hard”, then you will find it much harder to quit than if you genuinely believe that you can quit.

Both Atomic Habits and The Power of Habit have a Notes chapter at the back where they have references to all their sources. I’m not usually in the habit of reading it, but I got pretty curious about some of Clear’s ideas and at this point had a flick towards the back of the book. Almost embarrassingly, quite a few of his sources were tweets? (To be fair, this was just in the earlier chapters, and once he gets more into the meat of it, most of the references are to proper scientific journals and the like).

But still, even just comparing the length of their notes chapters - Atomic Habit’s 25 pages to Power of Habit’s 60 - you can already get the sense that the Power of Habit is a much more comprehensively-researched book. Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and I think it really shows in the quality of research. Both authors do the “tell an anecdote, then tie to back to a concept” style of writing that is common in self-help books but I have say Duhigg is the better writer in this regard - he’s a journalist that’s worked for both the New York Times and The New Yorker, and it shows.

But at the end of the day, a productivity book is only helpful if it actually can bring about change in your life. And it seems that’s what the rest of the world thinks too, as Atomic Habit has gone on to sell over 30 million books, while the Power of Habit lags behind at a mere 3 million.

As for some of the practical advice that Atomic Habits offers:

Firstly, create an awareness of the habits governing your life: write them down, point them out to yourself
Use time and location cues to start new habits (at time x and location y I will do behaviour…)
“Habit stacking”: find an existing habit, and tack on a new one onto the end of it
Make good use of your environment: if you want to drink more water, keep bottles nearby.

And so on. Ultimately the book is worth the read if you really take the time after you read it to implement as many of his strategies as you can into your life. Maybe not quite backed by science, but nonetheless I think many of his strategies will probably have a positive impact on your life.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

The Power Of Habit

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:40:49 GMT

Book review for The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I rated it 4.5 stars.

I originally gave this book 5/5 stars when I read it 7 years ago, and classed it as one of my all-time favourite productivity books so I figured it was due for a re-read and a proper review. It’s a fairly entertaining read filled with stories about the ways that habits work for and against people - from a gambling addict who ruined her life, to how Starbucks train their employees.

The one problem with The Power of Habit is that while it’s got many different stories about the life-changing power of habits, I don’t think it provides quite enough detail on how you can start or stop habits in your own life. You will walk away from this book feeling good, knowing that you can use the power of habits to change your life if you want to - but whether you actually will is the big question.

There is a section in the Appendix that gives an overview of how you might break a bad habit, which Duhigg dubs “the golden rule of habit change”. Habits are organised into a “cue - routine - reward” loop, and you should aim to keep both the cue and reward, and change only the routine.

Firstly, identify the routine end-to-end. The author’s example is that every afternoon he goes to the cafeteria, buys a cookie and has a quick chat with his colleagues.
Experiment with finding an equivalent-but-different reward. Try going for a walk, eating an apple, a cup of coffee, or heading over to a colleague’s desk and chatting with them. The aim of this is to try and figure out if there’s something else that can satisfy whatever the urge is.
Isolate the cue. You can do a set of who/what/when/where/why questions to try and narrow it down. Is it because you need the energy boost, or because you’re bored, or is it the time of day that’s influencing you?
Make a plan. The cue remains the same, but think of a new routine or reward to overwrite the original “bad” one. The author realises that he was using the snack break to chit-chat, which was what he really wanted. So he set an alarm on his phone every day to go over to someone’s desk for a chat instead.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

Light Up Coffee, Shimokitazawa

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Light Up Coffee is a cafe and coffee roaster with three stores across Kichijoji, Shimokitazawa and Mitaka. I've been visiting too many pretentious coffee spots lately, so Light Up Coffee in Shimokitazawa really hit the spot for me. It's a tiny two-storey building that falls perfectly into that charming "your local coffee shop" kind of vibe.

They do espresso-based drinks but I would say they specialise in pour-overs, with eight single-origin beans on the menu ranging from 650 to 800 yen (with a 50 yen surcharge for ice).

I forgot to ask what roast level each of the beans is, as it's not mentioned on the menu. If I had to guess though, I bet they are mostly light roasts. I decided to go for their Rwanda Shyira pour-over (700 yen). They had some snacks on the menu as well so I decided to pick up a slice of their cassata cake (800 yen).

Heading inside their store, they had a display with all their beans available for sale.

They had all the beans out for you to sniff as well, so if you're not sure you can make up your mind at the counter, maybe take a look inside first.

The branding is quite cute! Although I was a little bit confused by how they seemed to categorise their beans between sweet, soft, special and juicy.

You can take a seat at the counter downstairs, or head up to a small amount of seating on the second floor.

I went with the second floor, which I regret a little - I think it might have been more fun to watch the baristas at work. I did get a window seat though, which came with a nice breeze.

The coffee comes with a tasting card. The taste - very smooth. The tasting card suggests notes of berries, and that sweetness comes through. A solid, simple cup of coffee. Compared to the coffee I had tried at Ogawa before this one, although that wowed me a bit more, I felt the cup I got here really suited the laid-back nature of the cafe.

Of course, maybe it's all psychological - I recently learned that there are scientific papers that report that changing the shape or colour of the coffee cup you serve the coffee in also affects the taste of it. The more you know.

The little cake was really good as well. It was sort of like an ice-cream cake with dark chocolate, nuts and dried fruit inside, but not overly sweet like real ice cream would be.

Coffee store interactions can be rather a mixed bag, and as much as I want to rate a coffee based on the taste of the cup itself, the overall atmosphere and vibe always play a role. The staff here were super friendly guys, so Light Up in Shimokitazawa is a big thumbs up from me.

Dogs are allowed in-store as well.

As a final side note, Light Up is only a short walk from Setagaya-Daita station. If you are walking from Shimokitazawa though (only 10 minutes away) I would recommend walking past the Bonus Track on your way through, as it's a fairly lively area with a bunch of eateries.

The other place worth possibly checking out is Shiro-Hige's Cream Puff Factory right nearby which does these Totoro-themed cream puffs. Very cute.

Light Up Coffee's beans: the verdict

I picked up a bag of their La Palta Peru washed beans (2000 yen for 150g). I'm more of a natural than a washed person, but my husband is a washed fan and I picked up a natural bean from Ogawa so I figured I'd better be nice to him. All their beans are also available on their online store, and the prices range from 1700 yen to 2300 yen per 150g (i.e. 1130-1530 yen per 100g).

The beans come sealed with the roasting date on the back. The shop staff recommended waiting 10 days from the roast date.

What I really loved was the pour-over instructions they gave me.

The production quality on this is really high! 10/10 for the photos, and they even had separate instructions for the Kalita Wave and V60. I had recently visited Coffee Wrights which also uses the Kalita Wave. I really don't know too much about it. It seems the Wave helps prevent "channelling" (i.e. when the hot water doesn't equally spread out across all the coffee grounds and just concentrates in bits). I'm going to be honest, I'm starting to feel a bit of an urge coming on to buy all the possible drippers out there to taste test them...

Anyway, as for the bean itself - sometimes it's a bit fiddly to get the bean to taste good but bam, I followed their instructions and the beans tasted good from the first go. I went with 15 clicks on my Timemore C2, and 90°C as they suggested. I did adjust the amounts so that I could do it with my normal dose of 13g of beans (which meant 208g of water in total). Usually I do 13g/200g so it's just a tiny bit more water with this method.

It doesn't taste like a super-fancy bean, but rather a solid all-round bean that you could drink every day. I'm a fan and my husband was too.

Light Up Coffee: pour-over method

Light Up's V60 method reminds me a tiny bit of the 4:6 method. In particular, between the first pour and second pour, basically all of the water drains out of the dripper.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

Ogawa Coffee Laboratory, Shimokitazawa

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 02:06:53 GMT

Ogawa Coffee has a very long history, first opening in Kyoto in 1952, and more recently (since 2020) expanding to a number of stores in Tokyo as well. They even have one store in Boston! Although most of their branches are named “Ogawa Coffee”, there are three with the “Coffee Laboratory” moniker in Tokyo where I suppose they are going for a different sort of vibe. For their Shimokitazawa location they describe it as an “experience-based beans salon”. Well, whatever that means, it for sure is an experience.

Stepping into the store, the staff behind the long concrete counter will whip out a rather overwhelming menu for you to look at.

I’ll recommend that rather than heading straight up to the counter, you sidle along to the wooden display right behind it so you have a bit more time to try and figure out what the heck the colour wheel means.

They had some coffee grounds you could sniff - only for the super expensive stuff, though

A lot going on here.

If you have a couple of beans in mind, the staff are pretty helpful and will bring out the cans of beans for you to take a closer sniff.

It’s a bit confusing, but once you’ve got a bean in mind you can choose from a couple of options: ESP (Espresso), P.O (Pourover) or AP (Aeropress).

The bean with the price for 100g of the bean itself, or with the various drink methods

You need to find this legend in the corner to figure out what the acronyms mean

They have a fairly big price range on the pour-overs - from 830 yen for a blend bean up to 2700 yen for one of their premium beans from Panama. Most sit in the roughly 1100 - 1500 yen range.

They also offer cappuccinos or cafe lattes (extra 220 yen surcharge) which means you will probably be paying at least 1000 yen for one of those.

Ogawa Coffee Laboratory is going for a very specific aesthetic here. They can serve multiple people at once and will bring out the menu, tablet and credit card machines on the counter.

But as soon as the customers disappear, they also put all the machines away back underneath the counter until you’re left with a long bare concrete counter again.

Just with some coffee gear in the middle

In a way the minimalist aesthetic reminds me of Leaves. Along the other wall there’s a long bench, with a couple of small tables for seating.

At first I thought the white panels on the wall were just minimalist art, but actually it’s where they store all of their beans.

I ordered a cup of their El Salvador Los Alpes Natural (1220 yen).

Just jumping to bean prices for a second quickly, the beans for this were 2000 yen for 100g. There was another Brazil bean that cost 1520 yen for a cup, but 5800 yen for 100g of beans which is quite a big change in the ratio between the cost of a bean vs the cup. I feel like you’d want to go for the one where you are getting the most value for money per cup. Unfortunately the Brazil ones were sold out this time.

Anyway, the coffee came on a cute little coaster which I think was the cut-out square of one of those bags the coffee beans come in. I have to say it does not fit the aesthetic of this place at all, but is oddly charming.

And of course, a nice tasting card (you better be giving me one at these prices).

As for the taste - I was ready to be disappointed by this place being all fancy and the coffee not living up to the hype. But genuinely, really good coffee. I had told the barista I didn’t want something too acidic, and he started pointing me to all the boring beans - Yirgacheffe, Blue Mountain, their house blend and so on. So I’m glad I just completely ignored him and went for this El Salvador bean instead. I think maybe my idea of acidity is different to the average coffee-drinker so I probably shouldn’t be telling baristas that.

The card mentions notes of strawberry chocolate. There was a touch of acidity, but in a delicious way with hints of sweetness and I could almost taste the chocolate. This was a natural process bean, and I definitely love it.

I decided to buy a bag of the same beans to take home so my husband could try it.

Note they don’t put the roast date on the packaging itself (lame) but it is on the tin of beans, so if you care about that, you should make a mental note when they get it out.

The Ogawa Coffee Laboratory is located in a building known as Reload, near Shimokitazawa station.

There are a couple of other shops in the complex.

There was one cute one called Desk Labo which I had seen mentioned on an Instagram round-up of stationery shops.

Cute! Although nothing much I was interested in - I suppose it was more knick-knacks than stationery

Ogawa Coffee Laboratory’s beans: the verdict

Unfortunately Ogawa doesn’t provide any sort of pour-over instructions to go along with their coffee beans, which feels like a bit of a miss on their part - if it’s a lab, they should have like, the best possible recipes or something.

The bag just mentions the purchase date.

I was able to get one of the baristas to tell me what temperature they were doing their pour-overs at though - 92°C.

They were also selling the drippers they were using in-store, although I forgot to take a photo. From Googling online, it might be a Kalita Hasami-ware. Which apparently is the fancier version of the Kalita Wave, as it’s made out of porcelain. (Even so, it’s only like 2500 yen so it’s not as expensive as it sounds).

Unfortunately, once I opened up the beans at home I had the same issue I always tend to have with fancy beans! I just couldn’t get it to taste quite as amazing as it did in store (skill issue, or maybe this is a sign that I need to buy that dripper). I played around with it, and the best taste I got was 15 clicks with my Timemore C2 (not too fine) and also using the Leaves pour-over method (which is a fairly quick one and doesn’t extract too much).

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can email me at hello@emgoto.com

Hyakumeizan: hiking the Hundred Famous Mountains of Japan

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:46:33 GMT

The 100 Famous Japanese Mountains or Nihon Hyakumeizan (日本百名山) are a list of 100 mountains picked by mountaineer Kyuya Fukada in 1964. These hundred mountains are very popular among Japanese hikers, and generally have good public transport access and well-maintained trails. I wouldn't say that these are necessarily the "100 best mountains in Japan" but for any hiker living in Japan, this is the list to check off.

I climbed my first hyakumeizan a little over 4 years ago and have been steadily chipping away at them ever since, now having climbed 79/100. Climbing the hyakumeizan involves a fair amount of logistics planning, and you'll want to batch multiple peaks together in one trip for efficiency. Rather than listing the peaks as a straight list from the top of Japan to the bottom (or from highest elevation to lowest elevation) I have clustered these peaks as a practical guide of how you might hike them, taking into account my own experiences checking off the peaks so far.

Note that throughout this page, I make the assumption that you will want to climb these mountains during their snow-free period. Hiking on snow mountains is also an option if you have experience in that area - but personally I prefer to snowboard in winter instead, and don't want to give any unsafe information to anyone so I won't be mentioning any specifics about snow hiking in this guide.

Hyakumeizan map

The hyakumeizan are spread out across all of Japan, starting from the northernmost Mt Rishiri, on an island off the coast of Hokkaido, all the way down to the southernmost Mt Miyanoura, also on an island, off the coast of mainland Kyushu.

Conveniently there's quite a big cluster closer to Tokyo - there's a lot of day hike options here, plus many of Japan's highest peaks are in a region known as the Japanese Alps.

As a quick breakdown:

Hokkaido: 9
Tohoku (north of Tokyo): 14
Around Tokyo: 34 (quite a big battleground with lots of day trip options, which I'll break down below)
Japanese Alps: 27
Northern Alps: 15
Central Alps: 2
Southern Alps: 10
South of the Alps: 10 (a random assortment)
Kyushu: 6

How I've broken down this guide

When I began hiking the hyakumeizan, I was a complete beginner to hiking. My second ever hike was up Mt Tsukuba, which is coincidentally also the lowest-elevation and one of the most beginner-friendly of the hyakumeizans. So my hyakumeizan journey is also tied quite closely with how I started to enjoy different forms of hiking.

Keeping that in mind, I have roughly ordered the guide starting from where you might start if you were also a complete beginner. Day trips from Tokyo are the easiest category of hike, and then we start to add in weekend trips, using overnight buses and eventually, camping or staying at mountain huts. Using a car is recommended for some of these hikes, but where I can I've opted to show the public transport approach as well.

Day trips from Tokyo

The very first category of hikes on this page is also what I consider to be the easiest - day hikes you can do from Tokyo. You don't have to worry about travel planning, renting a car, booking accommodation months in advance or constantly checking weather forecasts. All you need is a free day and you can check another peak off of your list.

Of course, you might not be living in Tokyo (sorry!) but I figured this was a good place to start nonetheless.

Beginner/medium difficulty day hikes

Mt Tsukuba is quite possibly the easiest hyakumeizan on this list, with a combination of cheap price to get there from Tokyo, plus only being a short 30-minute walk to the peak if you take the ropeway. Quite coincidentally, this was also my very first hyakumeizan.

Mt Daibosatsu, Mt Akagi and Mt Amagi are also relatively beginner-friendly hikes. Mt Daibosatsu in particular is lovely for its views of Mt Fuji. To be honest I'll say that Mt Amagi felt a bit niche, but is also a nice opportunity to spend some time exploring Izu.

Mt Chausu is a very easy hike distance-wise if you take the ropeway up, but you can extend it into a bit of a longer hiking course to make it worth the trip. It's a bit pricey at a round trip of 12,000 yen on the Shinkansen, but there's not too much else to pair it with in the area. As a mountain I love it, though!

Mt Kirigamine, Mt Utsukushigahara and Mt Tateshina are all quite close to each other. They can each be done as separate day hikes, but as they are all quite short it may be worth pairing them together, especially if you can drive.

With the main hiking trail for Mt Ibuki being closed it's not too exciting of a hike, but I'm including it here as there's not really any way to pair it with anything if you're coming via public transport. If you have a car, I would consider pairing it with Mt Arashima.

Mt Tanigawa and Mt Mizugaki head into the medium difficulty as they are in the range of a 5 - 6 hour hike round trip, and quite steep. Mt Mizugaki can be combined with Mt Kinpu into an overnight camping trip as they are right next to each other.

I do not have blog posts up for them, but have YAMAP logs uploaded for Mt Kinpu (via public transport) and Mt Utsukushigahara (via car).

Longer day hikes

These mountains are still accessible as day hikes from Tokyo, but worth tackling once you have the confidence that you can do longer hikes.

Mt Kumotori and Mt Tanzawa could be technically classed as overnight hikes (with mountain huts available at the peak) due to their 9 - 10 hour hike length, but most hikers tend to do these as long day hikes. Although long, the pro of these are that they are quite close to Tokyo and you can climb them in the colder months.

Mt Ryokami is also a day hike, but the tight bus timings may make it difficult if you are a slow hiker.

Mt Azumaya is a day hike doable with the Shinkansen, and becomes much easier if you have a car.

Technically day hikes

These can be done as a day hike from Tokyo in a pinch, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it (due to either distance or cost). I've listed them here for completeness's sake, but I recommend reading on to see other ways to hike them in the sections below.

Day hikes with a car

Now we're moving onto hyakumeizans which are best done by car. Doing all 100 of the hyakumeizan via public transport is not impossible - I'm sure some people have done it - but in some cases you'll be doing wacky things like walking an extra 5 - 10km to the trailhead, or coughing up money for a taxi (if you still consider that public transport).

So being able to drive, or making hiking friends in Japan who can drive, will come in handy. If you can speak Japanese there is an app called Yamarii where people will organise drives to trailheads which can be an easy way to check off more hyakumeizans.

Mt Kobushi is a fairly straightforward hike if you have a car. It can be done via public transport too - it will just turn into an overnight hike with a stay at the summit's hut. Mt Hotaka does come with a chain-climbing section, which may be your first encounter with one if you are following the hikes in order on this page.

At a 3-hour drive from Tokyo, Mt Shibutsu also becomes a straightforward day hike if you can drive. Note for public transport users, actually it can be a rather lovely weekend of camping - the Oze Marsh is very famous for it - and it can also be combined with Mt Hiuchigatake.

Mt Kisokoma-gatake is one of my favourite beginner-friendly Alps hikes, with the Komagatake Ropeway taking you up to 2612m before you start hiking. It is public transport-accessible, it's just the timings become a bit of a squeeze and it would be worth spending a night in the area before or after your hike.

I've already mentioned Mt Utsukushigahara, Mt Kirigamine and Mt Tateshina in the public transport day hikes section, but just noting again it's only an hour's drive between Mt Utsukushigahara and Mt Kirigamine so you could knock both off in a day's drive, if you don't mind the driving time being much longer than the hiking time. Mt Tateshina is also quite close to both of them so there's some combo opportunities there as well.

Weekend trips

Having exhausted the available day hikes from Tokyo, you'll be wanting to turn your sights to weekend trips. You can hop on a plane or Shinkansen to another part of Japan, hike a peak or two while spending a night at a hotel in between and then head back home.

Assuming you are a beginner hiker, you may not be interested in overnight hikes just yet (I know I wasn't!) so this section exclusively features mountains that can be done as day hikes.

Nikko

The Nikko National Park makes for a lovely weekend getaway:

Day 1: Train to Nikko, hike Mt Nantai. Sleep at a hotel near Nikko station.
Day 2: Hike Mt Nikko-Shirane, head back to Tokyo.

Fukushima / Yamagata

Fukushima and Yamagata have four day hikes easily accessible via public transport - Mt Adatara, Mt Nishi-Azuma, Mt Bandai and Mt Zao. I wasn't very efficient, and actually did all of these separately. The Fukushima area is particularly famous for its autumn foliage, so it may be worth timing these for a late-September to mid-October trip.

For all but Mt Bandai, you can actually do as day trips from Tokyo if you wanted (pricey, at 20,000 yen round trip on the Shinkansen). But it would be best to double them up as two separate weekend trips.

Weekend 1:

Day 1: Shinkansen up to Yonezawa, hike Mt Nishi-Azuma, then 45-minute train ride to Yamagata and stay the night
Day 2: Hike Mt Zao then head back home to Tokyo

Weekend 2:

Day 1: Shinkansen up to Nihonmatsu, hike Mt Adatara, Shinkansen back down to Koriyama
Day 2: Hike Mt Bandai then head back to Tokyo.

I haven't put up a post for Mt Bandai but I have my YAMAP log here. You can stay at a hotel at Koriyama station, get an early morning train to Inawashiro Station and then begin your hike from there.

Aomori

Heading all the way up to Aomori, you can visit Mt Hakkoda and Mt Iwaki as two separate, easy day hikes via public transport. Mt Iwaki can be very short if you take the chairlift, but otherwise has a more normal hiking course as well.

I stayed at a hotel in Aomori for both of these hikes. I gave myself 3 days so I could do a tiny bit of sightseeing the day before. I'm not too sure if it's possible to squeeze the whole thing into a 2-day trip. But a feasible way to do it would be:

Day 0: Train up to Aomori at night
Day 1: Hike Mt Iwaki
Day 2: Hike Mt Hakkoda and head home to Tokyo

If you got a rental car, maybe you could also drive and do Mt Iwaki and Mt Hakkoda in one day.

I haven't put up posts for these but I have uploaded my YAMAP logs for Mt Hakkoda and Mt Iwaki.

Nagano

There's a lodge at the trailhead for Mt Asama, so if you're coming via public transport this is a pretty convenient place to stay. Otherwise it is also feasible by car.

Day 1: Shinkansen to Sakudaira station, bus to Takamine Kogen Hotel
Day 2: Hike Mt Asama, then get return bus back to Sakudaira and on to Tokyo

Mt Asama only re-opened in May of 2026, but was closed for a couple of years before that.

Niigata

Mt Echigo-Komagatake had a bit of a reputation as not being doable by bus, but I learned actually there are shuttle buses during the fall period, as it's a famous photography spot for its waterfall sunrise clouds.

Day 1: Shinkansen, local train and bus to Oyu Onsen
Day 2: Early morning shuttle bus, hike Mt Echigo-Komagatake, then head back to Tokyo

Personally I did it via car and slept in my car at the trailhead.

Another day hike mountain in Niigata is Mt Makihata. Unfortunately this is one of those ones that is probably best done with a car - drive to the trailhead the night before, hike it, and then drive home.

Gunma/Niigata

Mt Hiragatake is an interesting one. One popular (and masochistic) way to climb it is to do it as a 12-hour day hike. The other is to get a reservation at a lodge, and the lodge provides a shuttle bus service to take you up to a separate trailhead, where you can do the hike over a more reasonable 7 hours.

There's 3 - 5 different lodges that provide this service, but it can be a bit of a battle to get a booking. For one, you can try mid-week, but they don't put on the shuttle bus if you are the only hiker, so it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation where you want to be able to get a booking, but on a night popular enough that they are going to put on the bus.

It's a 4 - 5 hour drive from Tokyo to the lodge, or there's a public transport option which RidgelineImages has done.

Myoko-Togakushi Renzan National Park (Nagano/Niigata)

There are four total hyakumeizans in the Myoko-Togakushi Renzan National Park - the other two are Mt Hiuchi and Mt Myoko which I'll cover below. I did these two via car, but it seems to be public transport feasible.

Day 0: Night-time Shinkansen up to Itoigawa, stay in hotel
Day 1: Bus to trailhead, hike Mt Amakazari then back to Itoigawa. Take a 30-minute Shinkansen (4000 yen...) to Nagano station and spend the night there.
Day 2: Express bus from Nagano station, hike Mt Takatsuma then head home to Tokyo

Fukui

The only hyakumeizan in Fukui is Mt Arashima, and there's nothing super-close by to combine it with if you are coming via public transport. If you are just tackling Mt Arashima on its own, it would look something like:

Day 1: Travel 6 hours by Shinkansen and local train to Echizen-Shimoyama station, stay at Hotel Furearu Izumi
Day 2: Get on the first morning train, start your hike by around 7am. Get on the local train back to Fukui and then onwards to Tokyo.

If you have a car, there are some options here to make it more worth it via also hitting up Mt Ibuki and possibly Mt Ena:

Day 1: Drive 6 hours to hike Mt Ibuki, then drive onwards towards Fukui
Day 2: Hike Mt Arashima, drive onwards towards Mt Ena
Day 3: Hike Mt Ena then drive back to Tokyo

I did Mt Ibuki and Mt Arashima together with the aim of also tacking on Mt Ena, but gave up because the weather wasn't so good on day 3.

Tottori

Mt Daisen is rather a lonely hyakumeizan all on its own in Tottori prefecture, so there's not really much opportunity to combine this one with another hike.

Day 0: fly into Yonago airport (a 90 minute flight). It's about a 30-minute bus ride to Yonago station where there are hotels to stay.
Day 1: Hike Mt Daisen, maybe fly home or spend another night in the area

Fun fact, Tottori also has the distinction of being Japan's least-populated prefecture!

While in the area, why not check out Tottori's sand dunes, or head over to neighbouring Shimane prefecture? I'm a little biased since my husband is from here, but it's a rather underrated area with a pretty castle.

Shikoku

The biggest thing that surprised me about the island of Shikoku is that they don't have Suica/IC cards - their JR line is still using paper tickets! I'll admit I didn't really do much sightseeing other than the mountains, but Tokushima is famous for its Naruto whirlpools and also that iconic Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculpture on Naoshima island. With public transport, you'll need to fly in the night before:

Day 0: fly into Tokushima airport (90 minute flight from Tokyo)
Day 1: Hike Mt Tsurugi then travel on toward Iyo-Saijo station
Day 2: Hike Mt Ishizuchi, then fly home from Matsuyama airport

Iyo-Saijo has a number of hotels and is a pretty big town, but the travel time between the two hyakumeizans on public transport can be a bit of a pain. You can also get a rental car to make this a bit easier. If you are solo, it will really be quite pricey but not as bad if you go in a group.

Iwate

Two out of the three Iwate hikes can be done with public transport, and if you're still preferring shorter distance hikes, you could do a 2-day weekend of Mt Hayachine and Mt Hachimantai. Mt Iwate is the hardest of the three, and requires either a car or a taxi.

If you really wanted to, you could squeeze all 3 mountains into 2 days:

Day 1: 6am Shinkansen to Morioka station, pick up rental car, hike Mt Hayachine
Day 2: Hike Mt Iwate, drive an hour to quickly hike Mt Hachimantai, return the car, head home

For a more leisurely plan:

Day 0: Head up on the Shinkansen at night
Day 1: Mt Hayachine
Day 2: Mt Iwate
Day 3: Mt Hachimantai, then head home

Morioka station is a very convenient base for this - the 3 hikes are not too far of a drive (1 - 2 hours) from it. Since Mt Iwate is the longest of the 3 hikes, it would be best to put this on the middle day (considering you have to wait until the rental car shop opens at 8am on day 1).

Considering Mt Hachimantai and Mt Hayachine are the two shorter hikes, it might almost make sense to combine the two together on one day, instead of Mt Iwate. However geographically Mt Iwate is closest to Mt Hachimantai, which is why I chose to do those 2 together.

Mt Iwate was closed in October 2024 due to increased volcanic activity, and only just recently reopened in July 2026.

Yamagata

This trio of peaks has been on my radar for a while but I haven't quite gotten around to it. The main blocker for me is that my current plan is:

Day 1: 6 hour drive from Tokyo to Mt Chokai
Day 2: Hike Mt Chokai, drive 2 hours towards Mt Gassan
Day 3: Hike Mt Gassan
Day 4: Hike Mt Asahi
Day 5: Drive 6 hours home

Which sounds kind of rough, right? If you got a Shinkansen up there and then rented a car, it probably wouldn't be as tiring. (I own a car, so Yamagata feels a bit too close to Tokyo to resort to a rental car). It would also probably make sense to split this up into 2 trips, or give yourself a week to do the hikes.

Doing an overnight hike with a stay at the summit hut is an option for Mt Chokai and Mt Asahi. I have seen people do a 2-day weekend of Mt Chokai - where they drive out from Tokyo on day 1 and hike up to the hut. On day 2, they hike down and drive back to Tokyo.

Mt Gassan is the most touristy out of the three (it even has a chairlift), so I would suspect there is good public transport access, and is quite possibly a candidate for a weekend hiking trip by itself.

Nara

When you think of Nara you might think of the lovely bowing deer at the Todaiji Temple, but actually the two hyakumeizan in Nara are a little more remote and a hassle to get to, and I would really recommend going via car if you can. The public transport options aren't the greatest, and Mt Omine turns from a 9km hike into an overnight 22km one if you want to take the bus (rough). Mt Odaigahara is a very easy peak, though.

Day 1: Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, get a rental car, hike Mt Odaigahara, stay at a hotel (the Forest Kamikita hotel was quite nice)
Day 2: hike Mt Omine, drive back to Osaka, Shinkansen back to Tokyo

Northern Alps day hikes

Finally, the first mention of the Alps on this page! The Alps is home to a hefty 27 hyakumeizans. Many are 2-day hikes, and they're mostly a 3 - 5 hour drive away so it becomes a bit of a time commitment that you have to check off one at a time. Here are a couple of the easier ones.

Mt Norikura is the easiest mountain in the Northern Alps, with a bus that takes you up to the highest bus stop in Japan. If you can drive, you can do it together with Mt Ontake:

Day 1: Drive 4.5 hours to Mt Ontake, hike it, spend a night nearby
Day 2: Drive 2 hours to Mt Norikura, hike it, drive 5 hours back to Tokyo

You could swap out one of those mountains for Mt Yake, or do Mt Yake on the third day before heading home (as you pass by the area as you drive out of Mt Norikura).

Mt Tate is another weekender option. You can turn it into an overnight hike with Mt Tsurugi. It's only an hour's drive away from Mt Shirouma, so you could hike that together with Mt Shirouma over 3 days as well.

If you are using public transport, I think hiking any of these mountains realistically turns into a 2-day trip (one day for travelling, one day for hiking + heading home). There is also an overnight bus option for Mt Yake which I mention below.

Mt Ontake had a very deadly eruption in 2014. It only fully reopened a couple of years ago.

Southern Alps day hikes

Although I've been sticking to mentioning day hike mountains, if you want to hike Mt Senjo and Mt Kaikoma optimally, this will probably mean your first mountain hut visit. It's about as easy as a mountain hut can get, as you get off the bus at Kitazawa Pass and the hut is right there. This means you don't have to lug anything up the mountain, and if you bring extra gear you can leave it at the hut so you don't have to worry about the weight. From the hut, there are two routes leading out in 2 opposite directions to Mt Senjo and Mt Kaikoma, so you can do two separate day hikes.

If you're coming by car, you'll need a day 0 to drive into the area and possibly sleep in your car. For public transport users, practically it's a 3-day trip (and two nights at the hut) as the first day will just be travel.

Hiking in Kyushu

I think Kyushu is a pretty decent candidate as a longer hiking trip for beginners. The hiking courses are not too long and the public transport is great. It is actually possible to do 5 of Kyushu's peaks in 5 consecutive days via public transport, although the main limiting factor will be if you have the endurance to pull it off. (Not to mention 5 days of clear weather).

Personally, I did 4 hikes in 4 days and by day 4 I was really quite tired. Hypothetically here's an itinerary to do all 5 in one trip, but I would recommend either a) padding this with rest days in between or b) splitting the itinerary in half and doing it in two separate trips.

Day 1: fly from Tokyo to Oita airport, stay at Beppu
Day 2: hike Mt Sobo, return to Beppu
Day 3: Hike Mt Kuju, stay in Higo-ozu or Aso area
Day 4: Hike Mt Aso, travel to Kagoshima
Day 5: Hike Kaimondake, stay in Kagoshima
Day 6: Hike Mt Karakuni, stay in Kagoshima
Day 7: Return to Tokyo

And of course there is also Mt Miyanoura on its own island off the coast of Kyushu, which can be done as its own separate trip.

Day 1: fly from Tokyo to Kagoshima airport, then take a plane to Yakushima airport
Day 2: Drive to Yodagawa trailhead, 9 hours out and back
Day 3: Travel back to Tokyo

Of course, Yakushima is home to the famous 7000+ year old jomon sugi, and it's said to be the forest that was the inspiration for the Ghibli film Princess Mononoke. So it might be worth making a bit of a longer trip out of it. Since it's closest to Kagoshima, you could pair it together with some of the other Kagoshima hikes.

Mt Karakuni (韓国岳) is the final peak in mainland Kyushu I am yet to climb. You can get a bus from 霧島神宮駅 to えびの高原バス停, and then do this 3 hour hiking course.

Mt Aso is Japan's most active volcano, so double-check it's open before you go!

Overnight bus hikes

So overnight buses are great if you don't drive but are intimidated by the idea of staying in a mountain hut or at a campsite. You'll get picked up around 10 - 11pm in Tokyo, and then the bus drops you off at the mountain trailhead at 5am - 6am. You'll have enough time to do the hike and get back home to Tokyo the same day. The biggest downside depends on whether you can get any sleep on the bus.

If you're not a fan of night buses, there are alternatives for most of these mountains.

Mt Aka, Mt Fuji and Mt Naeba have huts at their peaks. However for Mt Naeba the public transport options don't seem to be as good and you may need a taxi. If you drive, you can stay in the town of Echigo-Yuzawa the night before which is quite a nice area.

Mt Hiuchigatake has the option for you to stay overnight in the Oze Marsh area - there are a bunch of mountain huts, plus the option to climb Mt Shibutsu the next day.

Mt Ena doesn't have too many options, it's either overnight bus or car.

Mt Aizu-Komagatake has both an overnight bus and overnight train option. They do have a hut at the top but without any food or drinking water so it's very minimal. Of course you can drive up to this one as well.

And finally Mt Yake I've mentioned earlier on this page can be done as a day hike with a car, or you can camp at the campground right near the trailhead.

Overnight hikes

So we're over 60 hyakumeizans in, and it's finally time to whip out your tent or prepare for a night at a mountain hut! I have a separate post on Japanese mountain huts where I go into what it's like to stay at one. I was quite leery at the idea at first, but actually I quite enjoy them now.

Myoko-Togakushi Renzan National Park (Nagano/Niigata)

Mt Hiuchi and Mt Myoko can be tackled as two separate day hikes, but to save you driving between the two trailheads, you may as well do them together as a set. The hut is really quite nice and is probably one of my favourites out of all the ones I've stayed at in Japan.

Mt Haku (Gifu)

Mt Haku is a lovely mountain - one of the three Holy Mountains of Japan - but it is a bit of a hassle to get to. If you're coming by public transport, it'll have to be an overnight hike due to the timings:

Friday: Shinkansen to Kanazawa
Saturday: Bus to the trailhead, hike up and spend night at summit
Sunday: bus back down, Shinkansen back to Tokyo

Note that I am specifying specific days here because I think this was only doable on the weekend.

If you are coming by car, you can do it as a day hike, and sleep somewhere nearby at the trailhead.

Day 1: 7 hour drive from Tokyo, sleep at lodge or campsite
Day 2: day hike, another night in the area
Day 3: drive home to Tokyo

Oze Marsh (Gunma/Fukushima/Niigata)

I've mentioned both Mt Shibutsu and Mt Hiuchigatake as separate day hikes earlier on this page, but actually they sit very close to each other. You can tackle them as a 2 or 3 day traverse course with a night in between at the Oze Marsh. The huts are lower in elevation so I think the amenities would be fairly good as far as mountain huts go - I hear they may even have an onsen.

Mt Iide (Fukushima/Niigata/Yamagata)

I've had Mt Iide on my list to hike but didn't quite get around to it this year. It's a 4-hour drive from Tokyo to the trailhead, plus a 14-hour, 20km hike over 2 days so it does sound a little daunting. There is a mountain hut near the peak, but I think it is a fairly minimal one so I see a fair few people do this one with a tent.

Mt Sukai (Nikko/Gunma)

Mt Sukai is a beast of a mountain - 24km over 14 hours. It used to be an easier mountain but a road closure means there is now only this one difficult route to climb it. You might think there is a mountain hut near the peak, but alas no. The "easiest" way to break it up would be to do:

Day 1: Hike 2.5 hours to the hut
Day 2: Hike 9.5 hours out to the peak, then back down to the hut
Day 3: Hike 2 hours back down to the trailhead

The hut is unmanned and requires no bookings. Depending on the time of year, you will be battling it out for a spot with all the other people who want to hike this mountain (including some rather large tour groups). They only reopened the hut in 2026, and the toilet they had broke from overuse so you have to bring your own portable toilets as well.

Of course, if you have the endurance you can do this as a day hike, and that is probably what most people do. I'm thinking I need to be a lot more fit before I attempt this one.

Northern Alps 2-day hikes

Now, back to the Alps. You can see this is where much of my remaining uncompleted hikes are.

Mt Goryu and Mt Kashimayari

Mt Goryu and Mt Kashimayari can be done as two separate 2-day hikes, but I'll point out there is the option to combine them together into a 2 or 3-day hike. However it involves crossing the Hachimine Kiretto, one of the three Kirettos (knife-edge trails) in the Northern Alps. Not for the faint of heart.

Northern Alps multi-day hikes

Kamikochi is a bit of an interesting area, as there are quite a few hyakumeizans near each other, and not one standard way to hike them. I think the ones I've done, I've done in a bit of an unorthodox way, but spending a couple days traipsing through the Northern Alps is quite the experience so I have no complaints.

If we talk about standard pairings:

You should definitely do Mt Washiba and Mt Suisho together as they are quite close in distance. This alone will be a 3-day hike, but you could turn it into a 4-day hike by tacking on Mt Yakushi.

I did Mt Kurobegoro together with Mt Yari but I think it would be more efficient to do Mt Kurobegoro together with Mt Yakushi instead. (I will probably have to come back and do Mt Yakushi on its own).

Mt Yari can be done as a 2-day out and back. Otherwise you can combine it with Mt Okuhotaka for a 3-day hike, but this involves you crossing the very scary Daikiretto ridge and I wouldn't recommend it unless you know what you are doing.

Mt Okuhotaka is a 2 or 3-day out-and-back hike on its own via the Karasawa Cirque (very popular in autumn).

So that will put you at 3 - 4 separate trips for these 6 peaks.

If you were up for a week-long traverse, you could follow a variation of this YAMAP log and do Mt Yakushi -> Mt Kurobegoro -> Mt Washiba -> Mt Suisho. You can see from there he descended via Sugoroku hut, but you could keep going and tack on Mt Yari onto the end of that (see this log), and then even go to Mt Okuhotaka via the Daikiretto ridge, which would give you all 6 of the peaks in this area in one go.

Mt Tsurugi and Mt Tate

Speaking of scary ridges, it's common to hike Mt Tsurugi via the Betsuyama Ridge, a very tricky traverse with steep drops. It's dangerous enough that Mt Tsurugi is considered one of the most difficult hyakumeizan. Doing this route does let you combine it together with Mt Tate over a 2 or 3-day hike.

The alternative to this is to hike it via the Hayatsuki Ridge. This is less dangerous, but requires a fair bit of endurance as there's 2000m+ of elevation gain (usually done as a 2-day hike with a stay at their hut). This is the route I will probably take.

Central Alps

Mt Kisokoma-gatake can be done as a 3-hour day hike, while Mt Utsugi nearby is a longer 2-day hike. If you combine the two together, realistically speaking it may become a 3-day hike.

Southern Alps multi-day hikes

Finally, moving onto the Southern Alps. Similar to the Northern Alps, there's a couple of multi-day hiking options here, or even the possibility of doing it as one long traverse.

Although Mt Houou is in the Southern Alps, it's sort of on its own. Best done as a long 1-day hike or 2-day hike with a stay at the hut.

Mt Kita and Mt Aino should definitely be done together as they are quite close. Generally you climb Mt Aino after passing Mt Kita, so it doesn't make too much sense to only do Mt Kita on its own.

Mt Warusawa and Mt Akaishi similarly make a lot of sense together as a 3-day hike. You can also tack on Mt Hijiri to make it a 4-day hike.

Mt Shiomi is probably done on its own as a 2-day hike, or possibly together with Mt Kita and Mt Aino.

And finally, you can do Mt Hijiri and Mt Tekari together as a 3 or 4-day loop hike.

If you are wondering if it's possible to do a Southern Alps traverse? Yes - see this YAMAP log for someone who did a 131km traverse covering Mt Hijiri -> Mt Akaishi -> Mt Warusawa -> Mt Shiomi -> Mt Aino -> Mt Kita -> Mt Senjo -> Mt Kaikomagatake. The only peaks they miss are Mt Houou and Mt Tekari.

Hiking in Hokkaido

And last but not least, we end this guide on the 9 remaining Hokkaido hikes. You might at first assume tackling Hokkaido and Kyushu will be quite similar, but a couple of Hokkaido's peaks are quite hard - Mt Poroshiri even gets the distinction of being "the hardest" hyakumeizan. Hokkaido comes with an increased risk of bears (bring bear spray) and the public transport options are quite bad, so I would recommend getting a rental car if you can.

Some crazy people do all 9 of Hokkaido's peaks in 9 - 10 consecutive days, but for the more sane of us, you will probably want to break this up into a couple of separate trips.

Mt Rishiri

This is the northernmost hyakumeizan, sitting on its own little island near Wakkanai airport, so it's quite convenient to do as a fly-in fly-out type of trip. And one plus - if you're scared of bears, it's maybe the only part of Hokkaido that is bear-free.

Day 1: Fly into Wakkanai airport, ferry to Rishiri island and spend the night
Day 2: Hike Mt Rishiri, fly home in the evening

Eastern Hokkaido

Eastern Hokkaido is quite a fun area to drive around. The only scary thing is that the Shiretoko Peninsula (where Mt Rausu is) has the highest concentration of brown bears in Hokkaido, and just last year a hiker died after being attacked by a bear mid-hike. As an example of a schedule you could follow:

Day 1: Fly in to Memanbetsu airport
Day 2: Hike Mt Shari
Day 3: Hike Mt Rausu
Day 4: Hike Mt Meakan
Day 5: Fly out via Kushiro airport

Of course this is quite the hard schedule, and you'd probably want to give yourself some buffer for rain. We did a variant of this via car ferry, and also visited Mt Asahi before heading home.

Daisetsuzan National Park

There are three hyakumeizans inside of Daisetsuzan National Park. Of all the Hokkaido hyakumeizans, Mt Asahi is the easiest, with public transport access and even a ropeway. It's also Hokkaido's tallest peak. As an example itinerary:

Day 1: Fly into Asahikawa airport
Day 2: Hike Mt Asahi
Day 3: Hike Mt Tomuraushi
Day 4: Hike Mt Tokachi and fly home in the evening

Although you'll probably want to give yourself a buffer! Mt Tomuraushi is quite long for a day hike.

Mt Yotei

Mt Yotei is a bit random, since it's not majorly close to any of the other hyakumeizans. If you were to combine it with another mountain, it would probably be Mt Poroshiri - there's a 3-hour drive between the two of them.

Otherwise, if you were to do this one on your own you'd fly in to New Chitose Airport. This is Sapporo's main airport so it could be nice to combine with a bit of sightseeing.

Mt Poroshiri

And right near the bottom of this hyakumeizan list is Mt Poroshiri. Along with Mt Sukai and Mt Tsurugi, it's one of the most difficult hyakumeizan, and requires a fair bit of logistics planning. It's a 2-day hike including a river crossing, and you have to book the hut and lodging in advance.

The minimal itinerary would be:

Day 1: Fly in from Tokyo to New Chitose Airport, drive to the lodgings near the trailhead
Day 2: Hike, stay at Mt Poroshiri's mountain hut
Day 3: Hike out, head back to the airport

As well as Mt Yotei which is a 3-hour drive away, I also see people combine Mt Poroshiri together with a drive up to Daisetsuzan National Park where they do one or more of the peaks there.

Mt Meakan and Mt Tokachi are both active volcanoes, and are currently closed as of writing this. Mt Rausu was also closed to hikers after a fatal bear attack in 2025, but reopened this year.

Mt Kusatsu-Shirane

Mt Kusatsu-Shirane gets its own section at the very bottom here, since the peak has been closed off since 2018. Even though a couple of the other hyakumeizans have been opened and closed over the years, Mt Kusatsu-Shirane seems to be the only one that is permanently closed. The popular hiking app YAMAP has a digital badge you can get for climbing all 100 peaks, but even they have set it so that you only need to climb 99/100 to receive it.

It seems from Oct 2026 they are planning on opening some hiking trails back up in the area, but access to the peak itself has been closed since its eruption in 2018.

Completing the hyakumeizan, and what comes next

This guide might read as an encouragement or endorsement to treat the hyakumeizan like a checklist, where you attempt to cram as many mountains you can into one trip. Really, here I could tell you - slow down, enjoy yourself! But to be honest I'd be pretty guilty of not following my own advice at times, so I can't really say that.

Nonetheless, some of my fondest memories of hiking these hyakumeizan have been the random side quests that have come out of it. I remember hiking Mt Amakazari, and then having the rest of our hiking plans rained out so we made a detour to Itoigawa's Jade Beach to find some jade, and then being duped by the "fox stones" that look like jade but are not. Or visiting Sendai after hiking Mt Zao and getting to see the Sendai Daikannon, the ninth tallest statue in the world (so cool!)

Some might also argue that hiking is not something that should be gamified with a list like the hyakumeizan. But for me it's been such a positive in my life - it's given me a reason to visit random corners of Japan that I would never have considered visiting otherwise. I've had a lot of fun these past 4 years.

And if you're wondering what comes next after you complete the hyakumeizan? There is of course the Nihyakumeizan, which will send you on another journey all around Japan. More niche lists include the Hyakuteizan, or the Yamanashi Hyakumeizan if you want to stay a little closer to Tokyo. For those crazy enough, you could probably do the whole hyakumeizan list over again. I know I have a fair few hyakumeizans I'd love to revisit in my lifetime.

Thanks for following my RSS feed!

Want to reply to this post? You can leave a comment or email me at hello@emgoto.com.