Climbed to the top: Mt. Tanzawa

Last Saturday, my friend and I, on a somewhat spontaneous agreement, decided to climb Mt. Tanzawa to its top (elevation of 1567m), located outside Tokyo metropolitan in Kanagawa prefecture. As it was located far away from my place, I woke up early and took the first train headed to Tokyo.

I transferred at JR Ochanomizu station to head to JR Shinjuku to meet up with my friend, and took the express train on the Odakyu line to Shibusawa station. The jingle for this station is an excerpt of a famous 90s Japanese pop music – Makenaide by ZARD (see below). Just listening to it made me happy, probably because I knew this song. I think anyone who knew this song would be somewhat happy.

I last climbed a proper mountain 2 years ago — Mt. Fuji with another friend in early September. It was the last weekend for 2018 where they opened the public to climb, before closing the tracks until the following year (it was not safe to climb afterwards due to potential snowfall and unsafe tracks).

The mountain that my friend (let’s call her YY) and I climbed is located in somewhat middle of Kanagawa prefecture, neighboring Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. Hiking to the top would take about 4 to 5 hours, and completing the entire journey would last about 8 to 9 hours. We began climbing at some time after 8 a.m. from the Tanzawa Oyama Quasi National Park entrance.

YY is an avid mountain hiker/climber, hence she proceeded more smoothly than I was throughout the journey. We reached the top about a quarter to 1 p.m. (probably around 12:50 p.m.) after a few breaks along the journey.

However, we couldn’t see any views below the mountain as it was a cloudy day — in fact, we were briefly covered by fogs that rose to the mountain top as we had our lunch (the weather turned cloudy after noon.). Luckily, it didn’t interfere with our mountain descent.

We reached the entrance a quarter to 5 p.m., which was within our schedule. I think we reached earlier than we planned due to the shorter time it took to descend the mountain via the same route we took to ascend the mountain. However, we were worn out after that climb, yet satisfied.

We wrapped up the day with a (somewhat mediocre) dinner (YY seemed to agree with this) at a seafood izakaya near Shibusawa station, and parted our ways back home after arrived at Shinjuku station.

I particularly enjoyed the entire journey — able to meet with various hikers with a casual konnichiwa as we passed by, a “ganbatte! You are almost there!” encouraging message from a random hiker as I rested a while to regain composure before reaching the top, shops in ‘checkpoints’ that were unique in each ways (I should’ve captured more photos of shops in each checkpoint!) — these truly shown the unique aspects of mountain hiking, especially with a companion.

Equipped with the excitement I had in casual hiking of the mountains, I look forward to conquer another mountain, someday in the future. Perhaps a future target would be Mt. Takao. Maybe another mountain in the Saitama prefecture. Or perhaps, one that is far away from the metropolitan area…