A snowshoe tour through the winter landscape of Tohoku in north Honshu.
Guided snowshoeing in Tohoku, a region famed for its beautiful and rugged landscapes, delicious rice, prodigious amounts of snow, culture, onsen thermal hot springs, and Matsuo Basho, whose most famous poetic journey was through the region.
January & February.
The Tohoku Hot Spring Snow Tour is a fully-guided tour suitable for reasonably fit people who can walk comfortably for three hours a day. We wear snowshoes to follow the tour route, which is mostly over snow-covered flat or gently inclined terrain. One steeper climb without snowshoes is also included. Please read more on Tour Levels here.
Accommodation is in Japanese inns, which have onsen thermal hot spring baths. Please read more on accommodation here. The maximum group size for this tour is 12 persons. We have no minimum size. If we accept a booking we guarantee to run the tour.
This fully-guided tour leads us through the rugged and rural Tohoku region in the depths of snowy winter. A ruggedly beautiful and mysterious land, Tohoku is dominated by towering mountains, remote valleys, vast forests and rugged coasts. Squeezed in between are communities where the inhabitants have toiled heroically for generations to live in concert with their environment; never more so than when snows fall copiously and envelop the landscape. Deep in the mountains, winter has always been the greatest test of the locals’ resilience, which is underpinned by their friendly and robust community. On the Tohoku Hot Spring Snow Tour we are warmly welcomed into their communities, much as the people here have sheltered each other and visitors for millennia, and gain insights into their lives; still based, in large part, on ages-old traditions.
The deep snows of winter pair delightfully with the warm and invigorating onsen hot springs that we make ample use of throughout this tour. Undoubtedly, Matsuo Basho, one of Japan’s greatest literary figures, also luxuriated in the many onsen found throughout Tohoku on his itinerant perambulation here in the Seventeenth Century. Our journey coincides in part with his travels, related in his poetic narrative Narrow Road to the Deep North. In his footsteps, we visit a spectacularly and precipitously sited temple high above a valley on a steep cliff.
The Walk Japan Tour Leader meets the tour group after lunch in Yonezawa Station. From here, our journey together takes us to charming farming hamlets, hot spring villages and towns. Here, with snowshoes on our feet, we venture out over countryside that glistens in the winter sun, or otherwise fades to an other-worldly monochrome under snow-laden clouds. We explore mostly flat or gentle inclines but also include a long descent through the incredible juhyo snow monsters and a steep climb without snowshoes up to Yamadera, one of Tohoku’s spectacularly sited temple.
Our journey deep, both literally and geographically, through the centre of the Tohoku region takes us ever deeper into this rugged, beautiful mountainous land. We stay in delightful inns, most of which boast onsen baths. After relaxing and reinvigorating ourselves in the mineral waters that gush up from deep within the earth, we stimulate our palates with evening meals that draw on the wide range of fresh produce from the seas, fields, rivers and mountains of northern Japan.
Accommodation is in Japanese inns, which have onsen thermal hot spring baths. Please read more on accommodation here. The maximum group size for this tour is 12 persons. We have no minimum size. If we accept a booking we guarantee to run the tour.
This fully-guided tour leads us through the rugged and rural Tohoku region in the depths of snowy winter. A ruggedly beautiful and mysterious land, Tohoku is dominated by towering mountains, remote valleys, vast forests and rugged coasts. Squeezed in between are communities where the inhabitants have toiled heroically for generations to live in concert with their environment; never more so than when snows fall copiously and envelop the landscape. Deep in the mountains, winter has always been the greatest test of the locals’ resilience, which is underpinned by their friendly and robust community. On the Tohoku Hot Spring Snow Tour we are warmly welcomed into their communities, much as the people here have sheltered each other and visitors for millennia, and gain insights into their lives; still based, in large part, on ages-old traditions.
The deep snows of winter pair delightfully with the warm and invigorating onsen hot springs that we make ample use of throughout this tour. Undoubtedly, Matsuo Basho, one of Japan’s greatest literary figures, also luxuriated in the many onsen found throughout Tohoku on his itinerant perambulation here in the Seventeenth Century. Our journey coincides in part with his travels, related in his poetic narrative Narrow Road to the Deep North. In his footsteps, we visit a spectacularly and precipitously sited temple high above a valley on a steep cliff.
The Walk Japan Tour Leader meets the tour group after lunch in Yonezawa Station. From here, our journey together takes us to charming farming hamlets, hot spring villages and towns. Here, with snowshoes on our feet, we venture out over countryside that glistens in the winter sun, or otherwise fades to an other-worldly monochrome under snow-laden clouds. We explore mostly flat or gentle inclines but also include a long descent through the incredible juhyo snow monsters and a steep climb without snowshoes up to Yamadera, one of Tohoku’s spectacularly sited temple.
Our journey deep, both literally and geographically, through the centre of the Tohoku region takes us ever deeper into this rugged, beautiful mountainous land. We stay in delightful inns, most of which boast onsen baths. After relaxing and reinvigorating ourselves in the mineral waters that gush up from deep within the earth, we stimulate our palates with evening meals that draw on the wide range of fresh produce from the seas, fields, rivers and mountains of northern Japan.
The itinerary for the Tohoku Hot Spring Snow Tour tour is ground-only, beginning in Yonezawa and ending in Shinjo. Prior to the tour, Walk Japan will provide detailed instructions for travelling to the meeting point in Tokyo from Tokyo’s Narita (NRT) and Haneda (HND) Airports. At the end of the tour, travellers are advised not to book themselves out on an early morning flight as it can take up to five hours to travel from Shinjo to airports in the Tokyo region.
Your Walk Japan Tour Leader meets the tour group after lunch at Yonezawa Station. From here we journey by vehicle into the surrounding mountains to Iide, a secluded village carpeted in deep snow. We savour wonderful winter vistas in one of the best rice-producing regions of Japan. Dormant paddy fields lay unseen below the shroud of snow while farmhouses, lying in the lee of stands of protective cedar trees, dot the quiet scene.
Our accommodation tonight is an inn adjacent to a tranquil lake. Here we relax in onsen hot spring baths before savouring the first of many delectable evening meals of the tour.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Dinner provided.
Total walking: N/A.
Total elevation gain: N/A.
After breakfast in our accommodation, we set off equipped with our snowshoes for our first venture over the deep snows. We are joined by a local forester, who leads us into the surrounding maple forests. On the way he relates stories about local life, including how the villagers have developed a successful business collecting syrup from the maples and processing it for sale in Tokyo’s fashionable stores.
A local family prepares our lunch, which is comprised of regional dishes using produce, both cultivated and foraged locally. Our congenial hosts tell us more about life in the region before we transfer by vehicle to Kaminoyama Onsen, a hot spring town at the base of Zao-san, a mountain famed for its juhyo snow monsters and ski runs.
We stay here for the next two nights in a Japanese inn with onsen bathing. After exploring the atmospheric old samurai district found in the town, we make the most of the onsen before enjoying dinner together.
Accommodation: Onsen hot spring resort.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 3km (1.9 miles).
Total elevation gain: 52m (170ft).
We transfer to the foothills of Zao-san, which soars to 1,841 metres and dominates the skyline for miles around. Rather than a singular mountain, however, Zao is a massif, a mountain range, composed of a series of dormant volcanic peaks.
A local guide joins us at a chairlift, which we ride together to a highland plateau nestled 1,400 metres high on the slopes of Zao. Nearing the top we enjoy spectacular aerial views of the terrain that we soon start descending through on our snowshoes. Below us spread out over the mountainside, littering the landscape like a regimented, if somewhat ragged, troop of monstrous snowmen, are Zao’s remarkable juhyo snow monsters. Juhyo are created by the accumulation of ice and snow on trees forming these towering snowy giants.
We follow a gently undulating trail down though this rare and extraordinary winter scenery to a virgin beech forest. Here, given the ideal climatic conditions, we may see muhyo, a relatively unusual phenomenon of hoar frost growing perpendicularly from the branches and twigs of trees.
We return to Kaminoyama Onsen where we spend the afternoon exploring the town. On a clear day, the setting sun makes a spectacle of Zao-san by dyeing it with vivid shades of pinks, oranges and reds before everything finally disappears into the dark of night. After refreshing ourselves once again in our accommodation’s onsen baths we enjoy another Japanese feast for dinner.
Accommodation: Onsen hot spring resort.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 4km (2.5 miles).
Total elevation gain: 110m (360ft).
After breakfast, a vehicle transfers us to Risshaku-ji, a temple more commonly known as Yamadera. Spectacularly sited high on a sheer cliff, we climb up to it steadying ourselves by using ice cleats. A winding, stepped path leads us through dense cedar forest to the temple buildings. Clinging seemingly precariously to the rock face, they present a picturesque scene and, together with the spectacular views over the valley below, make the effort more than worthwhile.
Matsuo Basho, Japan’s greatest poet, visited Yamadera in 1689 on the famous journey detailed in his itinerant narrative Narrow Road to the Deep North:
Ah, this silence
Sinking into the rocks
Voice of cicada.
The silence still pervades but at this time of year the cicadas, whose shrill calls punctuate summer days, are nowhere to be heard.
After enjoying lunch, we start our snowshoe walk up and over the Natagiri-toge, a mountain pass. We follow again in the footsteps of Basho, who related his fear of encountering bandits on his way here. However, we have no such worries as we walk a gently climbing path through majestic cedar forests. At the top of the pass, the trees clear revealing views to Gassan, one of the three Dewa Sanzan mountains. It is sacred to adherents of Shugendo, an ancient, esoteric religion combining elements from Shinto, Taoism and Buddhism. From here, we descend through an elegant beech tree forest. A vehicle awaits to transfers us to our accommodation for the evening, a Japanese inn aside a river in Akakura Onsen.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 6km (3.7 miles).
Total elevation gain: 346m (1,135ft).
After enjoying a delicious traditional Japanese breakfast in our accommodation, we transfer by vehicle to Hijiori Onsen. En route we visit a delightful museum dedicated to Basho.
Hijiori Onsen is a remote but little-known gem of a small hot spring town is nestled scenically into the caldera of a long extinct volcano, this area reputedly records some of the heaviest snowfalls experienced anywhere in Japan. Its name, which literally means ‘broken elbow’, derives from its hot spring’s therapeutic properties. Origami cranes, left by guests in thanks for the relief of their ailments, decorate the inns here. Hijiori Onsen is also one of the starting points to climb Gassan, which we saw yesterday from the Natagiri-toge.
We enjoy a simple but fortifying lunch of soba, a famous regional delicacy, before setting out on our afternoon walk accompanied by a local guide. He brings with him kanjiki, handmade traditional Japanese snowshoes, for our use.
While sharing insights with us into the local life and culture of the region, our guide leads us through beech and cedar forests, which he has been exploring since his childhood days. On our way we enjoy views over Hijiori Onsen and pass a torii shinto shrine gate buried deep in snow before reaching our accommodation in the town centre. We stay here for the next two nights.
After relaxing in the company of locals at a neighbouring onsen we join them at an adjacent popular bar for pre-dinner drinks. A multi-course kaiseki banquet follows in our accommodation.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 3km (1.9 miles).
Total elevation gain: 29m (95ft).
After breakfast at our accommodation and shod with kanjiki, we set out with our local guide once again. We make our way across rice paddies hidden deep beneath the snow to the site of a long-abandoned copper mine. Its remains, a crumbling smelter chimney and fragments of walls, protruding through the snow provide us with an ethereal scene and interesting hint into the area’s past.
At its height, a settlement surrounding the mine reportedly resembled a bustling frontier boom town but today nothing can be seen of it through the deep carpet of snow. Today, a quiet serenity pervades here as much as anywhere else on our journey over the deep snows.
Lunch is at a locally popular restaurant, which provides a variety of Japanese and western-style dishes. Our guide companion is an expert on Hijiori Onsen and passionate about his hometown, where he has spent his whole life. He has created a small museum that introduces local personalities, culture, history and includes a large display of kokeshi wooden dolls. These traditional charms are still used to bring on good harvests and healthy, robust children. They are also popular amongst visitors as mementoes.
Just as miners once sought relief in the onsen after a hard day's toil, we return to unwind at our traditional Japanese inn with a restorative soak before enjoying another delicious multi-course kaiseki banquet.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 2.9km (1.8 miles).
Total elevation gain: 105m (344ft).
After breakfast, we transfer to Shinjo where the tour concludes. Onward travel by Shinkansen bullet train is available from here. Your Tour Leader is on hand to advise on how to purchase train tickets for journeys within Japan or to your departure airport.
Accommodation: N/A.
Meals: Breakfast provided.
Total walking: N/A.
Total elevation gain: N/A.
This itinerary is subject to change.
Day 1 Yonezawa – Iide
Your Walk Japan Tour Leader meets the tour group after lunch at Yonezawa Station. From here we journey by vehicle into the surrounding mountains to Iide, a secluded village carpeted in deep snow. We savour wonderful winter vistas in one of the best rice-producing regions of Japan. Dormant paddy fields lay unseen below the shroud of snow while farmhouses, lying in the lee of stands of protective cedar trees, dot the quiet scene.
Our accommodation tonight is an inn adjacent to a tranquil lake. Here we relax in onsen hot spring baths before savouring the first of many delectable evening meals of the tour.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Dinner provided.
Total walking: N/A.
Total elevation gain: N/A.
Day 2 Iide – Kaminoyama Onsen
After breakfast in our accommodation, we set off equipped with our snowshoes for our first venture over the deep snows. We are joined by a local forester, who leads us into the surrounding maple forests. On the way he relates stories about local life, including how the villagers have developed a successful business collecting syrup from the maples and processing it for sale in Tokyo’s fashionable stores.
A local family prepares our lunch, which is comprised of regional dishes using produce, both cultivated and foraged locally. Our congenial hosts tell us more about life in the region before we transfer by vehicle to Kaminoyama Onsen, a hot spring town at the base of Zao-san, a mountain famed for its juhyo snow monsters and ski runs.
We stay here for the next two nights in a Japanese inn with onsen bathing. After exploring the atmospheric old samurai district found in the town, we make the most of the onsen before enjoying dinner together.
Accommodation: Onsen hot spring resort.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 3km (1.9 miles).
Total elevation gain: 52m (170ft).
Day 3 Kaminoyama Onsen – Zao – Kaminoyama Onsen
We transfer to the foothills of Zao-san, which soars to 1,841 metres and dominates the skyline for miles around. Rather than a singular mountain, however, Zao is a massif, a mountain range, composed of a series of dormant volcanic peaks.
A local guide joins us at a chairlift, which we ride together to a highland plateau nestled 1,400 metres high on the slopes of Zao. Nearing the top we enjoy spectacular aerial views of the terrain that we soon start descending through on our snowshoes. Below us spread out over the mountainside, littering the landscape like a regimented, if somewhat ragged, troop of monstrous snowmen, are Zao’s remarkable juhyo snow monsters. Juhyo are created by the accumulation of ice and snow on trees forming these towering snowy giants.
We follow a gently undulating trail down though this rare and extraordinary winter scenery to a virgin beech forest. Here, given the ideal climatic conditions, we may see muhyo, a relatively unusual phenomenon of hoar frost growing perpendicularly from the branches and twigs of trees.
We return to Kaminoyama Onsen where we spend the afternoon exploring the town. On a clear day, the setting sun makes a spectacle of Zao-san by dyeing it with vivid shades of pinks, oranges and reds before everything finally disappears into the dark of night. After refreshing ourselves once again in our accommodation’s onsen baths we enjoy another Japanese feast for dinner.
Accommodation: Onsen hot spring resort.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 4km (2.5 miles).
Total elevation gain: 110m (360ft).
Day 4 Kaminoyama Onsen – Yamadera – Natagiri Pass – Akakura Onsen
After breakfast, a vehicle transfers us to Risshaku-ji, a temple more commonly known as Yamadera. Spectacularly sited high on a sheer cliff, we climb up to it steadying ourselves by using ice cleats. A winding, stepped path leads us through dense cedar forest to the temple buildings. Clinging seemingly precariously to the rock face, they present a picturesque scene and, together with the spectacular views over the valley below, make the effort more than worthwhile.
Matsuo Basho, Japan’s greatest poet, visited Yamadera in 1689 on the famous journey detailed in his itinerant narrative Narrow Road to the Deep North:
Ah, this silence
Sinking into the rocks
Voice of cicada.
The silence still pervades but at this time of year the cicadas, whose shrill calls punctuate summer days, are nowhere to be heard.
After enjoying lunch, we start our snowshoe walk up and over the Natagiri-toge, a mountain pass. We follow again in the footsteps of Basho, who related his fear of encountering bandits on his way here. However, we have no such worries as we walk a gently climbing path through majestic cedar forests. At the top of the pass, the trees clear revealing views to Gassan, one of the three Dewa Sanzan mountains. It is sacred to adherents of Shugendo, an ancient, esoteric religion combining elements from Shinto, Taoism and Buddhism. From here, we descend through an elegant beech tree forest. A vehicle awaits to transfers us to our accommodation for the evening, a Japanese inn aside a river in Akakura Onsen.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 6km (3.7 miles).
Total elevation gain: 346m (1,135ft).
Day 5 Akakura Onsen – Hijiori Onsen
After enjoying a delicious traditional Japanese breakfast in our accommodation, we transfer by vehicle to Hijiori Onsen. En route we visit a delightful museum dedicated to Basho.
Hijiori Onsen is a remote but little-known gem of a small hot spring town is nestled scenically into the caldera of a long extinct volcano, this area reputedly records some of the heaviest snowfalls experienced anywhere in Japan. Its name, which literally means ‘broken elbow’, derives from its hot spring’s therapeutic properties. Origami cranes, left by guests in thanks for the relief of their ailments, decorate the inns here. Hijiori Onsen is also one of the starting points to climb Gassan, which we saw yesterday from the Natagiri-toge.
We enjoy a simple but fortifying lunch of soba, a famous regional delicacy, before setting out on our afternoon walk accompanied by a local guide. He brings with him kanjiki, handmade traditional Japanese snowshoes, for our use.
While sharing insights with us into the local life and culture of the region, our guide leads us through beech and cedar forests, which he has been exploring since his childhood days. On our way we enjoy views over Hijiori Onsen and pass a torii shinto shrine gate buried deep in snow before reaching our accommodation in the town centre. We stay here for the next two nights.
After relaxing in the company of locals at a neighbouring onsen we join them at an adjacent popular bar for pre-dinner drinks. A multi-course kaiseki banquet follows in our accommodation.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 3km (1.9 miles).
Total elevation gain: 29m (95ft).
Day 6 Hijiori Onsen
After breakfast at our accommodation and shod with kanjiki, we set out with our local guide once again. We make our way across rice paddies hidden deep beneath the snow to the site of a long-abandoned copper mine. Its remains, a crumbling smelter chimney and fragments of walls, protruding through the snow provide us with an ethereal scene and interesting hint into the area’s past.
At its height, a settlement surrounding the mine reportedly resembled a bustling frontier boom town but today nothing can be seen of it through the deep carpet of snow. Today, a quiet serenity pervades here as much as anywhere else on our journey over the deep snows.
Lunch is at a locally popular restaurant, which provides a variety of Japanese and western-style dishes. Our guide companion is an expert on Hijiori Onsen and passionate about his hometown, where he has spent his whole life. He has created a small museum that introduces local personalities, culture, history and includes a large display of kokeshi wooden dolls. These traditional charms are still used to bring on good harvests and healthy, robust children. They are also popular amongst visitors as mementoes.
Just as miners once sought relief in the onsen after a hard day's toil, we return to unwind at our traditional Japanese inn with a restorative soak before enjoying another delicious multi-course kaiseki banquet.
Accommodation: Traditional Japanese inn with onsen hot spring baths.
Meals: Breakfast, lunch & dinner provided.
Total walking: 2.9km (1.8 miles).
Total elevation gain: 105m (344ft).
Day 7 Hijiori Onsen – Shinjo
After breakfast, we transfer to Shinjo where the tour concludes. Onward travel by Shinkansen bullet train is available from here. Your Tour Leader is on hand to advise on how to purchase train tickets for journeys within Japan or to your departure airport.
Accommodation: N/A.
Meals: Breakfast provided.
Total walking: N/A.
Total elevation gain: N/A.
This itinerary is subject to change.
The itinerary for the Tohoku Hot Spring Snow Tour is ground-only, beginning in Yonezawa and ending in Shinjo.
The airports most convenient for international travel and access to the tour’s start at Yonezawa Station are Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita International Airports.
-----
FROM TOKYO’S NARITA AIRPORT (NRT)
From Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, Narita Express trains depart to Tokyo Station. The journey takes approximately one hour. From Tokyo Station, board the Yamagata Shinkansen bullet train to Yonezawa Station.
-----
FROM TOKYO’S HANEDA AIRPORT (HND)
From Tokyo's Haneda International Airport, board the Tokyo Monorail to Hamamatsucho Station, a 20 minutes journey, and transfer to the JR Yamanote Line for Tokyo Station. From Tokyo Station, board the Yamagata Shinkansen bullet train to Yonezawa Station.
The pre-tour pack includes detailed instructions, including a map, for travel to the accommodation at the start of the tour.
Tour participants are advised not to book themselves out on an early morning flight at the end of the tour, as the journey from Shinjo to the nearest international airport is approximately five hours.
The airports most convenient for international travel and access to the tour’s start at Yonezawa Station are Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita International Airports.
-----
FROM TOKYO’S NARITA AIRPORT (NRT)
From Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, Narita Express trains depart to Tokyo Station. The journey takes approximately one hour. From Tokyo Station, board the Yamagata Shinkansen bullet train to Yonezawa Station.
-----
FROM TOKYO’S HANEDA AIRPORT (HND)
From Tokyo's Haneda International Airport, board the Tokyo Monorail to Hamamatsucho Station, a 20 minutes journey, and transfer to the JR Yamanote Line for Tokyo Station. From Tokyo Station, board the Yamagata Shinkansen bullet train to Yonezawa Station.
The pre-tour pack includes detailed instructions, including a map, for travel to the accommodation at the start of the tour.
Tour participants are advised not to book themselves out on an early morning flight at the end of the tour, as the journey from Shinjo to the nearest international airport is approximately five hours.
