Sanageyama

Sanageyama is a mountain located near Toyota city with famous hiking trails. We really wanted to walk through the countryside and experience Japan’s nature, so we decided to go there.

Arriving at Sanageyama

It’s a bit cumbersome to get there as you have to ride buses and walk quite a bit through small villages, but these things made it even more fun for us as we were able to see exciting things like rice paddies or old oji-san working the fields.

Taking the Linimo and then another train, we ended up in the countryside
There should be a bus station around somewhere…
Well, that looks shady
Run-down shops everywhere, a strong contrast to the city
More walking after taking the bus
And more
Finally found the Torii gate that leads up the mountain
Fortunately we didn’t encounter any bears, only wild bees

The climb

After we passed through the gate, we were confronted with a split in the road. We could either go right and take a long, 4-hour trail up or go left and climb the same height in just over one hour. Because we messed up earlier and got off at the wrong station, it was already noon so we decided to go for the quick way up. As it turns out, this was only meant as a shortcut down and not as a way up, so it was incredibly steep and exhausting to climb, albeit very fun.

Beautiful nature
The not-so-beautiful trail
At least the stairs were pretty solid
Except the areas where there were no stairs
Lots of small bridges too
It got steeper
Almost halfway done
We took a five minute break here

We took a longer break at a small observation platform from which we were able to take a first glance at the landscape and realize the height we’ve gained so far.

Still steep
Fortunately it didn’t rain
The view was worth it
You better not trip, there was no railing and it went straight down

The second part of the climb wasn’t as bad fortunately. We came across a small temple where we were overtaken by some 70 year old dude with legs as thick as tree trunks, presumably training for iron man or something. I don’t know.

Not as bad
A natural toilet
Stairs to the temple
Must be a PITA to go up here every day

Summit and departure

We reached the summit in the afternoon at around 4:00 and met some Japanese guy who lived nearby and after talking to him for a while, he ran back down as if the trail was flat ground with no obstacles. It was also colder than I expected, so after taking a 30 minute break and eating our lunch, we noticed the sun starting to set and made our way down as fast as possible. We just managed to get down in time as it was already pitch-black when we passed through the Torii gate.

The peak of 猿投山 at 629m
The view from here was also gorgeous and we felt like we really accomplished something
As the sun started to set, the mountain was flooded by orange light
We had to hurry down, but going down fortunately is easier
That was close, there’s no way we would’ve been able to go down in the dark without tripping a million times
Who needs street lanterns if you have vending machines 🙏

After arriving back at the place we started from, we went to the nearest bus station and waited for half an hour. The bus took us somewhere (it was too dark to see where), but after getting off and walking for 40 minutes through the pitch-black countryside, we arrived at a train station and rode a train to another station from which we took the Linimo back to Nagakute Kosenjōu and finally arrived at the dorm.

Google maps saves the day once again as it’s close to impossible to navigate this area without it
B U G

We were completely exhausted as we basically spent three hours climbing the mountain and another four hours just walking around. It was a really nice adventure though and I would definitely go there again.