A Guide to Scenic Day Trips from Tokyo: Nature by Car and Rail Within a Weekend
AuthorMIRUTOBE editors
Table of Contents4 items
Day trips out of Tokyo fail the same way. Not the last train home, but what you came for shutting before you arrive. Nihonji stops admitting at 15:00, the Mitake cable car is JPY 1,200 return, and the car park for Kameiwa Cave is 2 km short of it.
Set those three constraints down first, then decide what time to leave. All the prices below are the published Japanese ones, in yen.
Check first: does the day actually close?
- You have looked up when the place closes, not when the last train leaves
- Your shoes will take 30 minutes or more of steps and slopes
- If you are driving, you have checked that the car park is actually at the site
- Your date does not fall inside the mid-January to February closure
- Everything fits into one daypack
Somebody is caught by the fourth line every year. The Nokogiriyama Ropeway goes in for its annual inspection from around mid-January and suspends services for anywhere between a week and a month. Going in winter means checking that window specifically. It runs the other way on New Year’s Day, when it opens at 5:30, earlier than usual, for the first sunrise. The first line — look at the closing time, not the last train — holds for longer trips too: on a day trip from Hiroshima to Miyajima the binding constraint was the ferry and the shrine hours, not the bullet train home.
What the three destinations cost, and when they shut
Ordinary-season prices and times as published by Mitake Tozan Railway, the Nokogiriyama Ropeway, Nihonji on Mount Nokogiri and the City of Kimitsu.
Of the three, Mount Nokogiri costs the most. The JPY 1,200 return on the ropeway carries JPY 700 of admission to Nihonji on top, for JPY 1,900 a head, before the fare out from Tokyo. Mount Mitake is the JPY 1,200 cable car and nothing more, even if you walk up to Musashi-Mitake Shrine at the top. Shimizu Keiryu Hiroba has no admission charge at all, so the whole cost is getting there.
On time the order reverses. The earliest to close is Nihonji, with last admission at 15:00. Because the ropeway keeps running until 17:00, it is easy to go up thinking there is still time and then find the grounds shut. Mount Mitake has no closing time on the shrine itself; you only have to make the last cable car. Shimizu Keiryu Hiroba is constrained by season and hour rather than by opening times — the light lines up twice a year, around the equinoxes, and then only at dawn.
Numbers bring the unit price down. Mitake Tozan Railway charges JPY 1,080 return for adults in parties of 30 or more and JPY 1,020 from 100. The Nokogiriyama Ropeway is JPY 1,080 return for groups of 25 or more and down to JPY 960 for student groups. Nihonji is JPY 630 for adults from 30 and JPY 560 from 100. On production of a disability certificate, Mitake is JPY 600 return and the Nokogiriyama Ropeway JPY 600 return, half price in both cases. None of that helps a weekend for two, but for a club or an extended family it is worth counting heads in advance.
What Nihonji actually contains bears directly on how long to allow. It was founded about 1,300 years ago by the monk Gyoki under an imperial decree of Emperor Shomu, making it the oldest imperially commissioned temple in the Kanto region, and its grounds hold a great Buddha of Yakushi Rurikoh Nyorai, the Hyakushaku Kannon relief and the Fifteen Hundred Arhats. Go for the Hell Lookout alone and you turn round in the summit area, walking past the Buddha plaza and the arhat section without seeing them. To see all of it, set aside 90 minutes on top of the ropeway journey. If the day is built on trains alone, whether the Seishun 18 Ticket’s periods and consecutive-day rule cover your date changes the whole return fare.
Where people trip up
What is on the mountain closes two hours before the transport below it
Nihonji runs 9:00 to 16:00 with last admission at 15:00. The last ropeway from the summit station is 17:00, so the gap is two hours. Read the ropeway timetable, set off in the afternoon, and you can reach the summit viewpoint but not the Hell Lookout or the great Buddha. Nihonji’s grounds cover more than 100,000 tsubo of the southern slope of Mount Nokogiri, and simply walking the Buddha plaza, the arhat section and the summit area takes an hour and a half. Counted backwards, 13:00 is the realistic time to be arriving at the summit station.
The January closure, and how long a return ticket lasts
The Nokogiriyama Ropeway suspends services for its annual inspection from around mid-January, for between a week and a month. It also stops in bad weather, and the Boso peninsula has plenty of windy days. Mitake Tozan Railway’s return ticket is valid for “one round trip over two days”, so you do not have to come down the same day — the next day still works. That matters if the plan involves a night in one of the lodgings at the top. A single ticket is valid on the day only.
Kameiwa Cave’s car park is 2 km from the cave
The City of Kimitsu treats the car park at Shimizu Keiryu Hiroba as drop-off only and puts the large dedicated car park opposite the Fureai Park Kimitsu roadside station on Prefectural Route 24, about 2 km away. Drive to where the satnav points expecting to park and this is where you stop. And the heart shape appears around the equinoxes in March and September, early in the morning: on any other date or at any other hour the cave and the water are there but the light is not. Turn up at midday in high summer expecting the photograph you saw and you will miss it for certain.
What to substitute when the conditions do not line up
If the hour has gone past what Nihonji will accept, switching to the summit viewpoint and the ropeway ride alone is the honest answer; the view does not require the temple. Shimizu Keiryu Hiroba still works as a walk along the stream when the light is wrong, and pairs with the nearby Nomizo hot spring into a half-day. Mount Mitake is the one to be strict about, because missing the last cable car turns the descent into an hour and a half on foot.
Some days are not suited to a day trip at all. The two Boso destinations lose a great deal of efficiency without a car, and on trains and buses there is no way to join Mount Nokogiri and Shimizu Keiryu Hiroba inside one day. My own division is Mount Mitake on public-transport days and the Boso peninsula on days with a car; the day is better for not mixing them. A list of destinations ranked by effort against what you get is in seven day trips from Tokyo by train.
Lighter wins on what you carry. Nihonji’s grounds are paved, but it is a mountain and the temple itself states that there are many steps and that parts are hard going. Mount Mitake has a long stone stairway from Mitakesan Station up to the shrine. Handing baggage to the cable car costs JPY 130 one way, so keeping everything in one daypack is a financial argument as well as a physical one.
Driving to Mount Mitake needs care with what you type into the satnav. Mitake Tozan Railway asks you to set “Mitake Tozan Railway Takimoto Station” as the destination and states explicitly that entering “Mount Mitake” routes you onto a closed road. The Takimoto Station car park holds 136 cars and opens 7:10 to 19:00, at JPY 400 an hour for kei and standard cars on weekdays and JPY 450 at weekends and on designated days, capped at JPY 1,500 a day on weekdays and JPY 2,000 at weekends. Motorcycles are JPY 500 a day and bicycles JPY 200 a visit. Park all day on a day trip and the parking costs more than the JPY 1,200 cable car return. Arriving by train means a West Tokyo Bus connection from JR Mitake Station up to Takimoto Station, and both the bus and the cable car accept PASMO and Suica.
The cable car and the buses put on extra services when it is busy, and the chairlift above stops for weather and season. If the chairlift at the top is part of the plan, check that morning whether it is running.
The same idea — step around the crowd and look at the landscape — works further afield. In Kyoto, counting back from closing time at the temples of Ohara and Ichijoji; in Hokuriku, Kanazawa and Kaga Onsen over two nights, which separates the standard route from the quiet side.
- KEIO Mitake Tozan Railway — timetable and fares ↗Checked on 2026-09-14
- KEIO Mitake Tozan Railway — access (Takimoto Station car park) ↗Checked on 2026-09-14
- Nokogiriyama Ropeway — fares and operating hours ↗Checked on 2026-09-14
- Nihonji, Mount Nokogiri — visiting hours and admission ↗Checked on 2026-09-14
- City of Kimitsu — Shimizu Keiryu Hiroba (Nomizo Falls and Kameiwa Cave) ↗Checked on 2026-09-14
Source: the reference block above / Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Checked on 2026-09-14
Other sales ending soon
4 days leftuntil Oct 24Air Busan Takamatsu-Busan Coupon: Up to 9,000 Yen Off Until October 24
5 days leftuntil Oct 25JAL Hong Kong Campaign: Tokyo–Hong Kong Round Trip from 75,800 Yen (until 25 Oct)
11 days leftuntil Oct 31Jin Air Kobe–Seoul: 5,000 yen off a round trip with code KTOUKB1, until 31 October
11 days leftuntil Oct 31Jin Air to Busan: 4,000 yen off a round trip with code KTOPUS, first 300 only