Takaoka - Admire a spectacular winding journey through the magnificent Alpine Route
After breakfast at the hotel, your guide will accompany you to Ogizawa by private car, where your journey will begin with a short electric bus ride to Lake Kurobe and the astonishing Kurobe Dam, which is at 186m (610 ft) is Japan's tallest dam. You’ll have some time to explore Kurobe before boarding an enclosed cable car up to Kurobedaira, which offers superb views of the surrounding mountains.
The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route connects Nagano and Toyama in a spectacular winding journey through the magnificent Tateyama Mountain Range, using many different means of transport.
The next leg of the journey is the Tateyama Ropeway. This mile-long cable car has no support towers between its top and bottom stations, making it Japan’s longest single-span ropeway – a seven-minute journey with incredible birds-eye views of the dam and the mountains that surround it. There are more great vistas of the lake from Daikanbo at the top, best viewed from an observation deck known as Unjo Terrace (which means “terrace in the clouds”). There’s a trolleybus up to Murodo, which is a volcanic plateau about 2,450m above sea level. This is a popular base camp for a variety of hiking and mountain-climbing trails, and it’s a fiercely beautiful place to explore. We recommend a walk to the picturesque Ikurigaike, a heart-shaped pond that mirrors the looming Mt Tateyama in its cobalt-blue surface. The area is home to many rare mountain animals and plants; watch out for the white-flecked Raicho birds (meaning “thunderbird”) hiding in the bushes. Above the pond is the Emmadai observation deck, which looks out over a steaming hot spring. The sight is so fearsome that it’s named for the chamber where Emma-o, the Buddhist warden of the underworld, judges men’s souls before they enter the afterlife!
The afternoon is a bus journey between Murodo and Bijodaira. There are a few stops along the way, including the Midagahara Wetlands. In the spring (mid-April to mid-June), there’s so much snow that the bus drives through a carved snow corridor with walls that can reach up to 65 feet. We’ll have a quick photo from the roof of Bijodaira Station, before a cable-car journey to Tateyama itself. You’ll then drive for another 90 minutes to your hotel in Takaoka. Dinner will be served at your hotel.
What's included?
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Breakfast
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Dinner
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Accommodation
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Tour
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Transfer