Mount Tsukuba

We got up and out of the house around 8am to take a short 1hr drive to Mount Tsukuba. Its a double peak mountain that’s pretty popular for hiking and other outdoor adventures. You can hike all the way to the top if you want, but there is a cable car and a rail car that goes to the top too. We opted to take the rail car up.

So we parked at position 1, took the rail car up to position 2, then we hiked across to position 3, and finally took the cable car back down. Then at the bottom from position 4, we took a bus back to our car.

We parked at the base, and even from a pretty low height your could see out pretty far.

We also had this view from the parking lot…

We started walking up to the train car station to take to the top. Nathan found a big ball. We don’t know the significance of it, but Nathan insisted to have his picture in front of it. Caroline didn’t care.

From there we walked the rest of the way up to the train car.

There weren’t many people around to take the train car up. I don’t know if that’s normal or if its less because of coronavirus. But it was a quick wait and ride up.

Finally made it up the left side to position 2. Its the lower side and not as cool in my opinion.

The hike across to the other peak was actually much more difficult than we expected. It was super rocky and the path wasn’t so obvious like Old Man’s Cave or something. Again, its one of the things we love about Japan. Danger is fun! But the kids did great listening and making sure their steps were careful. They really loved climbing on everything.

Finally we made it to the other side! The sign says, “One of Japan’s Famous 100 Mountains 877m” (2,877ft). Apparently there is an author who took it upon himself to decide which 100 mountains in Japan are the most famous and this is one of them.

The top was rocky and we just sat up there for 10 or 15 minutes just looking down at everything. It was super beautiful. Unfortunately it was a little hazy today and we couldn’t see Mount Fuji. Apparently you can see it on a clear day. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to come back!

The picture above is looking back to the left peak where we hiked from.

Also while we were at the top, there was a parachuter that flew over us.

Finally we took the cable car back down.

We had some lunch at the base, then took the bus back to our car. We didn’t really know where it was going to drop us off, but it turned out to be right in front of our parking lot. Another successful trip!