Mt Oyama Cable Car & Tofu - Private Day Tour from Tokyo

In the Edo period, a fifth of the city’s population made the pilgrimage to Mount Oyama every summer, walking three days to a shrine on a mountain that draws the rain. The pilgrim inns, the stair street and the tofu kitchens are still there, an hour from Tokyo, and almost no foreign visitor has heard of it.

We collect you at your Tokyo hotel and drive south-west into Kanagawa. The road ends at the foot of Koma Sando, a 362-step street of shops and pilgrim inns climbing between the cedars; your guide walks you up it past the spinning-top workshops (the Oyama koma is the local craft) and the tofu restaurants. At the top the cable car lifts you to Afuri Shrine’s lower hall, built on a terrace 700 metres up with the whole of Sagami Bay, Enoshima and, on clear days, Tokyo’s towers laid out below. The shrine sells the mountain’s spring water; there is a small tea room on the terrace.

Between the cable car stations is Oyama-dera, a temple with a red-leafed approach and an iron Buddha from 1264. Walkers can continue from the shrine to the 1,252-metre summit in 90 minutes; most guests do not, and enjoy the terrace instead.

Back at the foot, lunch is tofu kaiseki – a set of a dozen small dishes all made from tofu, the local speciality for 300 years, in a pilgrim inn. On the way back to Tokyo we stop in Isehara or, if you prefer, at Hadano’s Kobo spring for the water and the view of the Tanzawa mountains.

What you pay is what you pay

The price is one fixed amount for your whole group: the private van, fuel, tolls, parking and your driver-guide for the day. There are no per-person supplements and no booking fees. The Oyama cable car return ticket is included for everyone in your group. Your tofu lunch is optional and paid by each guest on the day. The shrine and temple are free.

Good to know

Koma Sando is 362 steps up to the cable car; it takes 15 minutes and is the only way in. The summit walk is optional. Autumn colour at Oyama-dera peaks in late November when the temple is lit at night; we can extend the day for it.