Takamine Highlands was added to Your Favorites!
Joshin’etsukogen NP, Nagano
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
At the Takamine Kogen Hotel, “Fuji Coffee” comes with a free refill—but only when Mount Fuji is visible from the highland. Here, the view can decide whether your coffee break gets a bonus.
For more than 100 years, a May festival at Takamine Mountain’s summit has marked the start of the climbing season. Locals pray for safe mountain journeys and good harvests, and a miko performs the sacred Ura-yasu-no-mai dance.
In the early Meiji era, local farmers cutting fodder for livestock in the Fukazawa valley found hot water seeping from a rock. Their improvised outdoor bath was the beginning of Takamine Onsen.
A 1902 flood and landslide buried the spring before the first inn could be built. After a later inn burned in 1978, the family spent 5 years rebuilding at 2,000 m; stones laid for that first inn now form the entrance steps.
Nearby Ikenotaira Wetland sits inside the old crater rim of Sanbogamine, but a huge opening breaks the rim to the southeast. The cause is unresolved: explanations include fault movement or erosion from rain and snowmelt.
The south slopes of Takamine were a shared working landscape: 15 villages had communal rights to cut grass there, and the Komoro domain also relied on the mountain as an important source of firewood for its retainers.
At nearby Ikenotaira, blueberry-like bilberries produce edible fruit—and their leaves are also where the moorland clouded yellow butterfly often lays its eggs. One small shrub provides both a snack for wildlife and a nursery for a butterfly.
At Takamine Onsen, the 2,000 m night-sky sessions use 3 large astronomical binoculars and a 40 cm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Staff guide the viewing, so the stars are more than a beautiful backdrop.
Meals at Takamine Onsen follow Shinshu’s seasons: mountain greens in spring, vegetables in summer, and mushrooms in autumn. Regional freshwater fish can include char, sweetfish, carp, and Shinshu salmon.
The lobby fireplace at Takamine Onsen burns natural gas that rises when the hot spring water is pumped. It’s a warm little reminder that the mountain’s gifts include more than the water in the bath.
