littlevoices

Hi,

I have been considering doing the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route on April 15 this year (Saturday, first day of opening), with 2 relatively fit adults. Happy to take any advice you have, though I've got a few specific questions

Unfortunately it looks like I am unable to pre-reserve tickets (I tried twice about midnight local time, but no luck) in my preferred direction of Tateyama to Matsumoto. I'm not even sure that the Saturday tickets were ever even released, if so they were snapped up in the first 30 minutes.

My current itinerary is as follows, nothing is booked that isn't refundable except my flights in:

• Arrive on 10th April to Nagoya (2 nights)
• 11 April: Toyota factory tour (already booked)
• 12 - 14 April in Takayama at Oyado Koto No Yume (Even booking 6 months ahead I was unable to get a room on the night of 15th April for the festival)
• Friday 14 April: Spend the day in Takayama at the festival, train to Toyama, overnight in a hotel near the train station (e.g. Comfort Inn)
• Saturday 15 April: Wanted to do the route from Toyama to Matsumoto, transferring through our bags
• Sunday 16 April: See Matsumoto, return back to Nagoya in the afternoon on the train
• Monday 17 April: Morning flight home (to Hong Kong)

So it's a short trip. Not my first to Japan, but my first for a while. I haven't been into the Japanese Alps before. Though it will not be the best value for money I am considering a JR Green Rail pass anyway for the week to give myself some flexibility on exact trains and I preferred Green class - I'm aware that quite a number of these routes won't accept the pass.

As I see it my options are:
1 - Just go to take my route, but without a reservation. I presume most of the 6000+ people estimated for that day will be in my situation.

Question 1: How bad is the overcrowding going to be? The website says over 90 minutes. Can I arrive early, e.g. stay in Tateyama, to reduce the problem. I'm fine getting up early to avoid the crowds

2 - Switch the route around to do it in the Matsumoto to Toyama direction

Question 2: How much inconvenience would it be to do Takeyama to Toyama to Nagano on Friday (long way, though I suppose only 2 trains)

Question 3: Does that reduce the overcrowding enough to make it reasonable?

Question 4: Why does the alpine website offer to let me reserve the cable car when doing this, but only until 11am - is the start time on the website actually when I leave Ōgisawa on the bus?

3 - Just skip the route entirely and instead loop around the coast towards Osaka.

Question 5: Is the route as good as it seems and worthwhile?

Thanks for taking the time to read and advise

RichardInSF

I am planning to take this route on the opening day, April 15, starting in Matsumoto and eventually ending in Kanazawa.

When I went to the website, I discovered that this year, for the first time ever, it is possible to reserve tickets in that direction, from Ogizawa to Tateyama. Although the process is slightly obscure, the English language site is quite understandable, credit cards are accepted, and a reservation may be canceled without penalty as late as 11:59pm on the day before the reservation.

As of 4pm today California time, all timeslots in that direction were available. I picked 11:30am from Ogizawa. To do that, you have to be on the train leaving Matsumoto station at 9:22 (or earlier). Trains on this route are mostly local and not that frequent.

Eskimoboy

I did the route from Toyama a couple of years ago on the 15th April. Couldn't book tickets in advance. Stayed at the Comfort Inn and made an early start, just turned up and bought tickets, think we got the train soon after 7. Crowds weren't a problem. Weather wasn't great but it was still a really interesting day out and well worth doing.

littlevoices

Thanks for the responses and opinions. I've re-checked the timetable and other options and decided we will just chance it on the 15th and see what happens without a reservation, but will get up nicely early. Trying to get to Matsumoto to start the route there just seems to spoil my Friday plans too much.

freecia

@littlevoices - You can buy tickets on Friday afternoon for Saturday travel
http://www.alpen-route.com/en/betwee...-%EF%BD%9E2017

It seems like it would be best to pick up the tickets on Friday ~ 14:00 in Toyama as they expect to ticket lines and general queues to be very crowded from April 15-25 in both directions
http://www.alpen-route.com/en/concer...81%84%E3%81%A6

I've also watched a few of the recent Murodo daily timelapses. It seems like mornings have much nicer weather than the afternoon which looks like white-out conditions more often that not.
http://www.alpen-route.com/en/live_camera/murodo.html

littlevoices

Thanks for the heads up @freecia, I'd also seen that on the website. I may get an earlier train into Toyama as a result to ensure we get the tickets. If it all goes wrong we'll just use our railpass to go around the mountain, but hopefully not!

YariGuy

Has anyone done this recently?

When is the "canyon of snow" where the bus drives through at its most spectacular?

And there seems to be a car delivery service - you can't drive through it, but seems like you can have your car delivered to the other end. Has anyone used this service?

littlevoices

Surprised that I never responded back to my original thread - it is a long time ago now, but managed to do things all fine, we bought the tickets the day before and were on the first train - of the day, and of the season - there were lots of happy people with placards waving to our train. It was a very worthwhile trip, and my only minor regret was that we sped through some of the earlier route parts (as it was so busy I felt) to get ahead of the crowds, and therefore missed out a chance to explore more.

To then go to YariGuy 's questions a little bit, based on my 2017 visit:
Snow - was spectacular throughout in April, it was huge walls in many locations on the route. The bigger risk, and we had it a bit on our day, was that it was too much new snow still falling, so in fact you couldn't see as far as possible. Also, some parts of the route are still closed that early in the season so you will need to balance what you want to see. The snow walls were a lot of fun for pictures and climbing around.
Delivery service - we used the bag delivery to the other side of the route, and it was (as you'd imagine in Japan) very efficient and there at the time specified. I generally would trust the Japanese on anything like this and that it would work as described: but would focus on whether your hire car agreement would cover it (Am sure they will be explicit if hire cars are allowed)

YariGuy

Thanks, sounds like something I should do soon!

Good point about the rental car agreement, I hadn't thought of that.