Escape the Urban Jungle of Tokyo, Go to Mount Takao, Hachioji, Japan

If you ask me to choose between exploring a bustling city or hiking in nature, I'd pick nature every time. So to escape Tokyo's urban jungle: Mount Takao (Takaosan 高尾山).

Getting to Mount Takao is a cinch. From a Keio Ticket Machine in Shinjuku Station, we bought a Keio Mount Takao Discount Ticket for 1390 yen. The Discount Ticket saved us 390 yen compared to separately buying train tickets (390 per way) and chairlift/cable car tickets (490 one way/950 roundtrip). (If you plan to skip the chairlift/cable car and just hike it all the way to the peak, then you're better off buying train tickets only.)

The train ride from Shinjuku to Takaosanguchi Station is about 50 minutes. From Takaosanguchi Station, it's a 3-minute walk to the entrance of Mount Takao, where you have three choices to get to the peak: walk, cable car, chairlift. The latter two options don't take you straight to the peak but will cut the hike by half. Of course we chose the shortest way to the peak. We've been on a few cable cars this trip so between the cable car and the chairlift, it was an easy choice: chairlift! ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).