Trip 13 to Japan - October and November 2025 - Page 2

Getting to Tsukuba involves a long expensive train (The Tsukuba express) and then a rather long bus ride.
The bus goes from bus bay one, and is generally timed to meet the train, but don't mess about on the transfer, follow the other hikers with haste.

Here's the low down view from where you get off the bus. Silvery clouds today, but also a lot of sun.

Every person that goes here uses this photo as their cover photo. I will not.

The visitor centre, and the mountain behind it.

The immediate area has a lot of shrines and hotels and shops, but no convenience store, which was very inconvenient. I bought drinks from vending machines.

They are however very nice shrines.

None of the shops were selling anything suitable for a hiking snack. They were all selling ice creams. The best I could do was wasabi broad beans. Hence I am now full of beans.

The trail starts just to the right of the main cable car station. No cable cars for me, which goes without saying even though I just said it.

It is a very nice trail, with all the different styles of Japanese hiking trail on one hike.

There are also a lot of very nice rest areas. This whole area is ridiculously popular on weekends, it was still quite popular on a Tuesday. Public urination without alarmed spectators was challenging.

I waited a while for the cable car to come, it did not. This cable car is a cable pulled tram carriage built on an angle, just like the one in Hong Kong.

No Autumn colours yet, but still great scenery.

Most of the rest areas were also mini shrines of some kind, with locals stopping to do some kind of mini ritual.

Although much of the trail was tree roots and rocks, there were parts with steps such as this.

Once you get to the summit area, you will realise it is not actually the summit. It is a saddle between 2 summits, with a lot of ice cream shops.

Here is the view you can experience if you were to have an ice cream. There are also public toilets. I had some wasabi broad beans.

The walk up to the first summit, from where I would double back, was probably the nicest part of the hike.

Some almost twilight light shots (does that make sense at all?) looking into the sun, with the clouds and whatever.

There are still some challenging rocky bits to climb despite being a few hundred metres away from the ice cream shop. I am glad they have not erected a proper staircase (yet).

Nice tree tunnel.

Here is summit number one of two. It is 8 metres lower than the other peak that you will soon see.

View from the summit.

And some more view, without obstructions. It looks like I am up really high due to the prominence, but I am not really, just under 900m.

More rocks and leaves.

After I ran past the ice cream shops I took pause to look back at summit number one before proceeding to summit number two. You can see a junior school group sitting in a roped off area on the left.

At a random spot in the middle of nowhere, table service, with table cloths.

Here is summit number two, and as you can see, a lot of other people.

View from summit number two.

All the summits have little shrines, this one has a bridge for matchmaking, according to a sign and picture.

A bit more view looking away from Tokyo.

Now it is time for many large rocks. They get larger the further you proceed along the trail.

Big rocks and low bamboo oh my.

This is the one you can walk through.

The rest areas on this hike are of a very high quality.

Time to descend. Still a great view.

There was even a wheat field.

I sat here for the last of my broad beans.

Here is the other cable car, an actual cable car.

I still had to complete the triangle, or more of a rhombus, by walking back to the first cable car line from the bottom of the other cable car line. It was a very quiet very developed path that I had to myself.

And then the hike ends as it started, with a shrine. A different one to before. So many shrines.

The little back street my hotel is on with all the book shops also has made an effort to string lights all the way along the street. It is a very nice spot with a lot of good restaurants.

Just passing through again on my way to Kanda.

I took a photo of this place last year. I find it amusing given its location.

Here is my yakisoba. Quite flavourless. I burnt my lip on my ramen last night, so it was a no soup night tonight.

The Kanda station area is always interesting, a bit seedy in places.

I then discovered that this street full of restaurants and maid bars extends nearly all the way back to my hotel.
Now I must research a few options for tomorrow's non hiking day.

The Chofu station area is vast and under re construction.

There is a shopping street of sorts, uncovered.

The nearby temple had good toilets.

The first part of the garden is over the road from the main shrine and main garden. It focuses on aquatic plants, and or weeds. Parts of the decking seemed like a law suit waiting to happen, it was making cracking noises while I was walking on it.

The approach to the main temple/shrine featured many ice cream shops. I checked google maps, Jindaiji temple.

Here is the main temple. There is construction going on all around me but I expertly framed the shot to hide it.

The way to the main garden is to climb up over the back of the main temple, nice view.

Before heading to the rose garden, I first took in the plum grove. It is clearly at its peak, dead and twiggy.

Behold, the rose garden of Japan. It was impressive.

There are maps explaining where to see every kind of rose, and a rose garden annex with new varieties with names yet to be ratified by the world rose organisation. The committee meets every 5 years in April in Bucharest, the last meeting was suspended without any names being agreed following protests from the Albanians. Nice sky.

Here is some more of the rose garden, with grass.

Inside that impressive building were the usual cacti and tropical plants, and whatever these are.

You can also take in the lilies in their concrete troughs.

Most Japanese gardens have an area where grandmas who have stolen plants from the garden and placed them in pots can then sell them to the public. The authorities round them up every few days, some get deported.

There is also an area with lilies not in concrete troughs.

After leaving the park, I continued north, and in about 90 minutes, arrived at Mitaka. The special rapid train stops here so it must be a sizeable area. The station is elevated, so please enjoy the view.

The Mitaka station itself is large and busy, not that you can tell from this photo. So that was my day auditing the roses. Everything seems above board.

Great sunset tonight. This is right near Ochanomizu station.

I tried another shot of the sunset looking up guitar street, not as good as the above.

Shinjuku has quite a lot of new street signs and furniture and paving, despite the station still being a permanent construction site.

These little trucks advertising 'Nights' are everywhere. I do not know what nights is, it is impossible to google, and there's no way I am scanning a QR code on a truck to find out. Statistically, given the location, there is a 9/10 chance it is for an underage sex doll/robot.

Neon road crossing.

Time to briefly head into Kabukicho. I got propositioned for massage 3 times by Africans.

There was not a lot of Halloween stuff going on, but this busty mummy with fake boobs was getting filmed wobbling up the street.

Time to wave goodbye to Kabukicho.

The Fender shop was on my journey, which means I was at Harajuku.

Here is the new bit of Shibuya. I have not been in there.

Ikea is more my style. I could have gone there for a meatball dinner.

Shibuya is not all closed off yet for Halloween, although the sad dog statue is already boarded up. There are signs everywhere asking people not to engage in bad Halloween behaviour, and an advertising cartoon playing on buildings reminding everyone that Halloween is banned and that the cool kids don't do Halloween in Shibuya.

Time to wave goodbye to Shibuya, it is always too busy to eat dinner in these places, I prefer some elbow room.

Instead I fled back across town to Jimbocho and had Hinoya curry, vegetarian, cheap. Now to go to bed so I can get up at 5:30.

It is relatively easy to get here. From Shinjuku take the Odakyu line to Shibusawa and change to a bus. The bus normally meets the train, my train was 5 minutes late so I had to wait 30 minutes for the next bus, along with the other hikers who missed the same bus which I presume drove off empty. It takes nearly 2 hours from Tokyo though, so factor that in!

Stay on the bus until the last stop, about 15 minutes. It does not really stop anywhere else. This stop is called Okura if you want to find it on a map.

A bear was sighted in September.

The bridge is normally not part of the hike, but it is today! I will take a different route up that avoids other people.

Bridge from afar. I forget the name of the trail, all the trails here have names, however you follow the stream on a forest road for a while.

This is actually a public road. People drive up here to collect spring water. No cars came but I saw a couple parked.

Quasi national park is best national park.

Early low down view of my eventual destination of Tonodake.

Abandoned spooky camp spot. There were a few.

This one is somewhat active. There were a couple of camper 4wd's parked nearby. This is the end of the road, all hiking trail from this point.

The cars I mentioned. Fantastic weather, I was confident of seeing Fuji...

Not really any Autumn colours yet.

But it was still very nice. I saw no other people until I got up to the ridge.

People complain this trail is hard to follow. Nonsense. It is somewhat under developed compared to the main trail, but compared to many other hikes I have done, it is a well marked highway.

Starting to get cloudy.

Nice scenery all to myself. No bears, but I did come face to face with a deer. I nearly walked head long into him before I realised it was a deer.

The view was getting good.

The view was really good, with excellent clouds.

Once I joined the main ridge there was a decent amount of other people.

The trail was also much more developed along the top.

Nice portrait orientation version of the view.

Looks a bit spooky once I got closer to the clouds.

That ridge going around to the right in the middle of the screen is the one I had come up.

Tonodake summit. On weekends it has hundreds of people. You can camp here too. About 10 people today.

The camping spot. It has toilets and solar cells.

Now it is time for a lot more view appreciation.

My head got in the way of the view.

Around there is Tanzawa, in the cloud.

Same view shot as before, alternate version to remind you of the view.

It appears as though I am kind of in the clouds.

Now it was time to descend and do some low bamboo appreciation.

But first more view.

I ran down the tracks pretending I was a train. I made the noises too.

I like low bamboo.

Down there somewhere is my bus stop.

Sun streaming through cloud.

This camping spot also appears to still be active.

Still a long way to go.

Back into the dark forest, complete with bear bait ahead of me.

New parts of the wooden trail. Not really needed except for the huge number of people that use this trail on weekends cause massive erosion.

This spot operates as a cafe on weekends.

I enjoyed running on the smoother parts of the trail.

Time to follow the hose. There are a lot of hoses on Japanese mountains.

Fern country.

Last bit of view. I am not even sure if that is my mountain in the middle or not.

The trail exits into farm land, but its only a few hundred metres back to the bus stop and the cool bridge.

Time for the stance, in my running tights and blood red running t-shirt. Yeah. Leeches can't get through my tights.

I had to wait 20 minutes for the bus, so bonus bridge shot it is.
It is now quite late and I have not had dinner. I will stay local this evening, so don't expect many photos later!

This little side street off a side street still has at least 6 eating places on it.

This is the station I use a lot on this trip, Ochanomizu. It is built over a creek and has had the same excavators parked on the elevated platform for as long as I can remember. My theory is they painted themselves into a corner and do not know how to get them off.

NIGHT SHRINE!

Random hotel and or karaoke bar.

Just a colourful street through Okachimachi.

And so I ticked another of the foods commonly found at train stations off my list, soba with vegetable tempura. I got the hot soba and it was very delicious. I just stick all those vegetables into the soup and let the batter fall off and soak up the soup. I have no idea if this is good or bad etiquette.
Anyway, tomorrow I go to Kobe. I have stayed their once before, a long time ago.