Tokyo Day Trips | Okutama

Tokyo day trips

2 Jul

Escape from Tokyo | A short day trip to Okutama for some hiking and nature

Tokyo is a fantastic city to live in but it doesn’t take long before one craves a bit of nature and a little escape from the massive urban sprawl that is Tokyo. Fortunately, nature and adventure isn’t far away from central Tokyo at all and one of my personal favourite day trips is Okutama. Perfect for a BBQ, cold river swim or a short hike. From Shinjuku you can take the Chuo line to Ome station and then it’s an easy change onto the Ome line. The final stop is Okutama and you will find yourself surrounded by beautiful greenery and some pretty decent mountains if you fancy a bit of a hike all within just a couple of hours from Shinjuku!

In fact you could actually get off a few stations before at Mitake and do a nice hike all the way to Okutama. If you’re a bit late in getting to Mitake then I recommend taking the cable car to the top of Mitake-san and then hiking to Odake-san before descending down to Okutama for a well deserved swim. You can find more detail at this blog here if you’re interested in more of a hike. I’ve done this route once before and we managed it at a pretty fast pace at 4 hours with no breaks - but plan for 5 hours depending on your fitness level. For an easier hike with not much climbing you can check the Mukashi Michi hike here. I went there not so long ago (May 2020) and there were some sections of the track closed due to Typhoon damage but a detour was possible.

This particular set of photos is from a much easier day though. We simply took the train directly to Okutama station, did a short hike along an abandoned railway track before taking a dip at the Tama river. There’s a nice little bento shop in the Main Street and also a craft beer place which does some takeaway beers. You’ll quite often find people here taking a little escape from Tokyo at the weekends having a BBQ by the river bank. Perfect. If you ask around there’s also an onsen not far away from the river area if you need to warm up after your cold water dip!

Anyway, I’ll let the images do the rest of the talking and if you have any questions just write in the comments below or send me a message!