Backpacking in Japan

A new Cicerone guidebook “Trekking in the Japan Alps and Mt Fuji” has just been published.

One of the authors maintains the Hiking In Japan facebook group and his WordPress blog Tozantales.

from Doing Miles. Thank Amy and Jim.

http://doingmiles.com/2018-04-japan-tokai/

http://doingmiles.com/2018-05-japan-izu/

I just moved here, and it’s true that the information is dispersed and hard to come by. The Northern and Central Alps are worthy–and also can be Swiss like in their expense. There are some blogs–which you can find as well as I. Check out this subreddit, too: https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/5mvmjo/long_distance_hiking_in_hokkaido/

Also, when you come, go out of your way to visit hikersdepot.jp.  The physical shop in Mitaka (just West of Tokyo) is arguably the world’s best collection of lightweight gear on the planet, and run by a passionate crew. They have some good advice to give, too.

Good luck!

Thanks, everyone.  I’ll likely order the Cicerone book.

Regarding hiking in the Northern and Central Alps – what does expensive mean?  Is this for transportation or huts, etc?

“Expensive” is relative. Almost all trails are in national parks and wild/free camping is not permitted. Designated campsites are near the huts and cost JPY500-1000 per person. Staying in the manned huts is JPY6,000-10,000 depending if you take meals or not. If you don’t stay in the huts you will have pay  JPY100 to use toilets and to buy drinking water for JPY200-500/liter. There are relatively few natural water supplies in the Japanese Alps, so all water at huts is either captured rainwater or helicoptered in.

Public transport from Tokyo will average JPY10,000-20,000 one way depending on distance. It will almost certainly be cheaper than renting a car taking into account the additional fuel costs, highway tolls, and parking unless you are in a group of 4 or more.

Hiking season in the Alps is mid-July thru mid-November. It is brutally hot/humid in central Japan in Summer then so the mountains are a weekend escape for 60 million folks who live within 5hrs of driving. Highly recommend you plan to hike weekdays and avoid the first 3 weeks of August during Obon holidays and Sept 15-23 Silver Week holiday.

Thanks, Rick!  It does sound like the accommodation will add up (especially since we’ll be backpacking with kids.)  I’ll have to find out if it’s common to charge for children or not.

I think that I saw kids in the Alps maybe once – in Japan it tends to be an activity for older people.  That said, I would expect that the huts would charge for each person, regardless of age, and I don’t recall seeing any discounts for kids – but not that I was looking.  You don’t say how old your kids are, but the other thing to consider is that a lot of the Alpine routes are very exposed and I’d hesitate to take kids on them, whatever the age.  However, there are plenty of really good, safe places to hike with kids – for example, we took our kids (they were 3/7/11 at the time) to Kamikochi, which can be reached by public transport, and then walked up the valley to a place called Tokusawa where they actually rented out family sized tents on a big lawn.  It was a really scenic area and the hut there – which is quite famous – had good meals, if you weren’t inclined to cook.  From there I did an overnight trip on my own up to Yarigatake, which is further up the valley.  There are also lots of daywalks around Tokyo and Osaka.  There’s also more info available from the Japanese tourist websites now too than there used to be.

Edit – the prices for staying in the huts usually include two meals.  Have a look at my trip report for Yarigatake to get an impression of what the huts are like.

I hadn’t realised that they hadn’t updated the Lonely Planet book since 2009, but a lot of their walks were off compared to the routes that the Japanese guide books suggested and I genuinely wondered if they’d actually done some of the walks.  I showed a few of them to a Japanese friend who owns a hiking shop and run trips a couple of times a month and he really wasn’t impressed.  The 1988 book is, I think, the original Lonely Planet book and has odd attitudes to Japan and used to trigger a lot of complaints, and was also out of date even back in the 90s – famously it suggested a stay at a hostel near Tokyo that closed in the early 80s!   It also got a mountain name wrong, which confused my friend when I was telling him where I was intending to walk …..

There’s this overview on Cicerone’s website:

https://www.cicerone.co.uk/an-intro-to-the-japan-alps