hiking

November 8, 2024 5:38 AM

hello to the mountains of Nagano Prefecture. After two train rides and one on a bus, we were in Kamikochi, one of the most beautiful regions of the Japan Alps [soranews24/wiki]
posted by HearHere (6 comments total)

If you enjoy this kind of thing, consider the series Laid-Back Camp, currently on CrunchyRoll, which is all about camping in Japan.
posted by SPrintF at 6:19 AM on November 8 [4 favorites]

Hiking in Japan is really fun. I spend most of my time around Osaka and Kyoto when I visit and you can very quickly get to relatively remote areas even only using public transportation. It might be a bit harder around Tokyo but I'd expect the rest of the country is more like it is in Osaka.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 9:01 AM on November 8 [3 favorites]

There are a bunch of shows on NHK World Japan that are all about this kind of thing. Their VODs expire after a certain amount of time, and it varies from show to show, but you can watch recent episodes for these series:

Let's Trek Japan for the real hardcore mountain climbing/hiking stuff
Cycle Around Japan (and Highlights) if you prefer biking
Hit the Road if you want a road trip instead
Train Cruise if you're wondering why you'd bother driving in a country full of amazing trains
Journeys in Japan for a little bit of everything

There's also a bunch of limited-run or one-off shows that might be of interest in their Travel section.
posted by chrominance at 9:47 AM on November 8 [1 favorite]

one of my fantasy retirement ideas is to travel the world to visit wonderful forests and trees. I will add this place to the list!
posted by supermedusa at 9:51 AM on November 8 [1 favorite]

I've hiked Kamikochi. It's wondrous.
posted by HumanComplex at 10:38 AM on November 8 [1 favorite]

Not so much hiking, but recently a couple we know invited us camping. I’d always wanted to go, but never had the time/hadn’t gotten all the stuff (tent, etc) needed. We went camping a couple weeks ago with them, and just got back from a little overnight trip on our own. Looking forward to checking out more parts of Japan this way. There are tons of campsites, both official (paid) and unofficial (random sites that people have decided are for camping). Kamikochi is definitely on the list, but due to distance, it’s kind of there in a final boss kind of way.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:46 PM on November 8