TripToJapan.com Editorial Team
Japan is 73 percent mountains, which is why almost every town has a trail leaving from behind the station and why a country the size of California has around 30,000 registered climbing routes. It also explains the vending machines at 2,300 meters on Mount Fuji.
The best hikes in Japan run from Mount Takao, an hour from Shinjuku on a paved path with a cable car, to multi-day traverses of the Northern Alps above 3,000 meters. The main season is July to early October for the high mountains and roughly April through November for everything below the snow line.
Fuji's four climbing routes open from early July to early September, and the mountain is genuinely dangerous outside those weeks. Around 200,000 people climb it each season.
Every trail now charges a ¥4,000 entry fee per climber. The Yoshida route on the north side caps entry at 4,000 people a day and closes its gate overnight unless you hold a mountain hut reservation, which is designed to stop the exhausting overnight climb known as bullet climbing.
Allow 5 to 7 hours up and 3 to 5 down from the Fifth Station at 2,300 meters. Book a hut months ahead, take warm layers since the summit hovers near freezing in August, and a headlamp if you are going for sunrise.
It is a hard walk rather than a technical climb, so a reasonably fit beginner can do it. The altitude is what catches people out.
We'll build a costed, pre-planned Japan itinerary you can customise to your taste.
Three ranges run down central Honshu: the Northern Alps in Nagano and Toyama, the Central Alps and the Southern Alps. The Northern Alps hold the best of it, with Yari-ga-take's spire and the Hotaka ridge both over 3,000 meters.
The season is July to early October. Mountain huts along the ridges serve meals and sleep you in shared rooms for ¥12,000 to ¥15,000 per person with two meals, and they must be booked in advance. Carrying a tent is possible at designated sites only.
Nothing here requires ropes on the standard routes, but several sections use chains and ladders, and the weather turns fast above the tree line. Register your plan at the trailhead box or online through Compass, which is the standard system in Japan.
Kamikochi is the valley floor at the base of the Northern Alps, 1,500 meters up, and it is the easiest way for anyone to walk in serious mountain scenery.
The flat riverside path from Kappa Bridge to Myojin Pond and on to Tokusawa is gravel, well marked and suitable for anyone, with the Hotaka peaks straight ahead the whole way. Allow 2 hours to Myojin and back, or 4 to Tokusawa.
Season: roughly April 17 to November 15, closed by snow the rest of the year
Access: no private cars. Park at Sawando or Hirayu and take the shuttle bus, around ¥1,600 one way from Sawando
Cost: free to enter the valley
Stay overnight at one of the lodges if you can. The valley empties after the last bus and the early morning light on the river is the reason people come back.
Takao is 599 meters, an hour from Shinjuku on the Keio Line, and it gets around three million visitors a year, which makes it the most climbed mountain in the world.
Trail 1 is paved the whole way and takes about 90 minutes to the top. The cable car or chairlift cuts out the steepest third for ¥490 one way or ¥950 round trip. Trail 6 follows a stream and is the prettiest, Trail 4 crosses a suspension bridge, and the Inariyama trail is the quietest.
Yakuo-in temple sits partway up and has been there since 744. On clear winter days Fuji is visible from the summit. Go on a weekday in November and you will still share the path, because fall color here is a national event.
Daisetsuzan is the largest national park in Japan and the most serious hiking in the country. There are no villages inside it, bears are a real consideration, and the weather comes off the Sea of Okhotsk with no warning.
The accessible version is Asahidake, Hokkaido's highest peak at 2,291 meters. The ropeway runs to 1,600 meters for ¥3,500 round trip in the June to October peak season and ¥2,800 the rest of the year, and from the top station a boardwalk loop past steaming vents takes an hour.
Continuing to the summit adds 2 to 3 hours on loose volcanic scree. The Daisetsuzan Grand Traverse across the range takes 4 to 5 days and needs full self-sufficiency.
Fall color starts here in mid-September, the earliest anywhere in Japan.
The island of Yakushima off southern Kyushu is a granite dome covered in cedar forest that receives rain most days of the year.
Shiratani Unsuikyo is the famous one, a moss-covered ravine with trails from 1 to 4 hours and a ¥500 conservation fee. The longer day is Jomon Sugi, a cedar estimated at over 2,000 years old, reached by a 22 km round trip that takes 9 to 10 hours, much of it walking a disused logging railway.
Buses to the Jomon Sugi trailhead are restricted in peak months, and you need to buy a shuttle ticket the day before. Yakushima's interior is a two or three-day trip minimum, and waterproofs are not optional.
The Kumano Kodo is a network of pilgrimage routes through the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, walked for over a thousand years and a UNESCO World Heritage site along with the Camino de Santiago.
The Nakahechi route is the standard choice, running from Takijiri-oji to Hongu Taisha over two days, then on to Nachi. It is well signposted in English, passes through villages with inns, and a luggage transfer service means you walk with a day pack.
There is no fee and no permit. Book accommodation months ahead, since the villages have very few beds, and expect steep forest paths rather than gentle countryside.
Koyasan is a monastic settlement at 800 meters founded by Kukai in 816, with over 100 temples and 50 that take overnight guests.
The hike in is the Choishi Michi, the original pilgrimage approach, 24 km from Kudoyama with stone markers every 109 meters. It takes 7 to 8 hours, and almost nobody does it, since the cable car takes five minutes.
At the top, the walk through Okunoin cemetery is the essential one. Two kilometers of path under 500-year-old cedars past more than 200,000 graves, ending at Kukai's mausoleum. Go after dark, when the lanterns are lit.
A night in a temple lodging with vegetarian shojin ryori runs ¥12,000 to ¥25,000 per person.
Mount Hiei rises 848 meters on the northeast edge of Kyoto city itself, and the Kirara-zaka trail climbs it from Shugakuin in about two and a half hours through forest.
At the top, Enryaku-ji spreads across the ridge in three precincts. It was founded in 788, was the training ground for the founders of most Japanese Buddhist schools, and was burned to the ground by Oda Nobunaga in 1571. Admission is around ¥1,000 for the main areas.
This is also where the marathon monks run their thousand-day discipline. Cable cars run up both sides if you would rather not walk.
Oze straddles Fukushima, Gunma and Niigata, and its centerpiece is Ozegahara, the largest highland marsh in Japan at 1,400 meters.
The entire walk is on wooden boardwalk, so there is no mud and no route finding. Skunk cabbage flowers in late May and early June, day lilies in July, and the grass turns copper in late September.
The season runs late May to late October. Buses reach Hatomachi Pass from Numata, and the walk across the marsh takes 4 to 6 hours. Mountain lodges inside the park need booking.
The Shikoku Karst plateau runs along the border of Ehime and Kochi at around 1,400 meters, with limestone outcrops in open grassland and cattle grazing in summer. It is one of the few genuinely open landscapes in a country of forested mountains.
The island's other walk is the 88 Temple Pilgrimage, a 1,200 km circuit that takes 40 to 60 days on foot. Most visitors walk a section instead, and temple stamps now cost ¥500.
High mountains above 2,500 meters: July to early October. Snow lingers into July and returns in October
Mid-altitude trails: late April to November
Low hills like Takao: year round, with winter giving the clearest views
Avoid: the rainy season in June, when trails flood and leeches appear in western Japan, and typhoon season in August and September
Fall color moves from Hokkaido in mid-September to Kyoto in late November, which gives you a two-month window somewhere in the country.
No permits in the Western sense, but several rules apply.
Mount Fuji charges ¥4,000 per climber on all routes. Most mountain areas ask you to file a climbing plan, either in a box at the trailhead or online through Compass, and some prefectures now require it by ordinance for certain peaks.
Mountain huts must be reserved in advance, and turning up without a booking is not acceptable in the Alps. Bear bells are standard in Hokkaido and the Alps, and bear spray is worth carrying in Daisetsuzan.
Trail access: free almost everywhere, with a few conservation fees around ¥500
Mount Fuji: ¥4,000 per climber plus ¥3,000 to ¥15,000 for a hut
Ropeways and cable cars: ¥490 to ¥3,500 round trip
Mountain huts in the Alps: ¥12,000 to ¥15,000 with two meals
Temple lodging at Koyasan: ¥12,000 to ¥25,000
The expensive part is getting to the trailhead. Many of the best routes need a bus from a rural station, and a rental car pays for itself in the Alps and Hokkaido.
Pick one region. The Northern Alps with Kamikochi and Matsumoto is the strongest week for scenery, and a route through the Alps and Hokuriku strings the valley together with Takayama and Kanazawa.
If you want walking with culture rather than summits, the Kumano Kodo and Koyasan combine into five days in Wakayama, with inns and hot springs at the end of each day. That is the version most people enjoy more than the peaks.
Whatever you pick, check the forecast the morning you go. Japanese mountain weather changes faster than the maps suggest, and the huts will turn you back if it looks bad.
