We had a day trip to Tateyama. It’s in the top 3 of most worshipped mountain areas in Japan and spectacular scenes to see.

You get near the top via a funicular railway to a bus terminal.

Then it’s a coach journey for 50 minutes via a very twisty mountain road with great views of the landscape. Along the way we were shown a tree that was over 1000 years old:

First there was the mountains, valley with river and forest with some snow.


Then there is lots of snow and the road is cutting a path through the snow. The snow wall lining the road gets higher and higher until, at the complex near the top, the snow wall is 17 meters high!

Snow Wall

After getting off the bus, you can walk over to have a close look at the snow wall. It’s incredible that so much snow is dug out after winter to get to the road and it all melts in Summer.

There is a hotel plus restaurant area where you can branch out to explore the area.

Mountain

In one direction is a frozen lake and volcanic activity where it smells of suplhur and steam is coming out of rocks. There is a hot spa (highest in Japan) using the water from the spring.

You also have the mountains. One of which we clambered up to get some great views.

Climbing up there was very hard work since the air is thin. So we were pretty exhausted by the time we got up there. Coming down was fairly easy though.

Filed under: Life in Japan by blogmaster