On this Tokyo trip, our one and only outing beyond the city was Mt. Takao. We wanted to take our daughter out for a proper little hike. Starting from Shinagawa Station, it took us a bit over an hour to reach Takaosanguchi Station on Keio’s Takao Line, arriving at around noon. The weather was not cold at all, but our daughter insisted on wearing her pink down jacket anyway. Since I was not sure how much energy she would have, I brought a baby carrier just in case.
Near the station there is a Takao Trick Art Museum. I have never actually been inside, but I remembered seeing the curator on a Japanese variety show in some comedy segment. We did not visit this time, but even from the platform the building looked strangely familiar.
There was a stall beside the station selling grilled dango, so we had a quick snack before setting off. After finishing, we handed the skewers back to the shop. There do not seem to be many trash cans along the route.
From there, we followed the small path next to the station toward Kiyotaki Station, the lower station of the Mt. Takao Cable Car.
You can of course walk all the way up from the bottom, but I did not think our daughter had that kind of stamina yet, and taking the cable car sounded fun anyway.
At the station, there were two options: the regular cable car and a two-person chair lift, the kind that looks a bit like a ski lift. We figured our daughter probably would not be thrilled about the lift, so we chose the cable car. The slope is extremely steep, which is why the cable car itself is built in a stepped shape. Halfway up, the ascending car meets the descending one, which makes the ride even more fun.
Once we started walking, our daughter insisted on sticking to the rocky parts of the trail. Every now and then she would stop to poke at leaves or little stones with a stick. Whenever the path turned smooth, though, she immediately demanded to be carried.
Originally, we had not planned to go all the way to the top. The idea was simply to walk as far as we comfortably could. But the route felt shorter than we had expected, and our daughter still seemed to have some energy left, so we decided to go for the summit.
We could see Mt. Fuji from the top, though it was so far away that it looked tiny.
We asked another visitor to take a family photo for us, but our daughter refused to look at the camera. During this whole trip, we did not manage to get a single three-person photo with her actually looking at the camera.
On the way down, we finally brought out the baby carrier, which made a huge difference. We were back at Takaosanguchi Station before 3:30 p.m. Along the way, we also picked up a maple rice cracker, which I assume is another Mt. Takao specialty.
We were back at Shinagawa Station a little after five in the evening. It was a thoroughly satisfying little hiking trip.
Note: This article is translated from Traditional Chinese.
