Otama Trail

The trail is around 10km (3-4 hours for a leisurely pace) walking along Tama river from Kori to Okutama station. This is a train based event starting from Kori station.

I have not been on this trail before, but TWMC had done a part of this trail last year on Okutama weekend trip organised by Stephanie and Nobue San.

Train schedule: (Meet at Tsukuba Station 6:40 a.m)

Tsukuba to Kori

6:54 Tsukuba ---> Akhihabara ---> Kanda (TX/Yamanote line)
8:04 Kanda ---> Ome (Chuo Rapid)
9:41 Ome ---> Kori (10:06)

Okutama to Tsukuba

16: 23 Okutama ---> Kanda ---> Akhihabara ---> Tsukuba (19:09)

For a picture journey of the trail here is the link
https://gvlt.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/otama-walking-trail-hike-from-kori-to-okutama/
and the details in (Japanese)
http://www.tachikawaonline.jp/walk/hatonosu.htm
Before heading to Okutama station , at the final leg of the trip we could have a onsen break as well at Meogi Onsen
http://www.okutamas.co.jp/moegi/

This is a report of today's day trip walking the Otama trail.

We took the 6:54 TX from Tsukuba. We managed to catch the special rapid train to Ome at 7:57 from Kanda which meant we had half an hour of free time at Ome to catch the next train to Kori. We ended up strolling in and around Ome station gazing at the old film posters at the station. Andreas caught up with us enroute Kori. We reached at Kori at 10:06. At Kori we were joined by Tanaka San , Andreas' colleague, who hiked with us from Kori till Hatonosu.

The weather forecast for the day did not look good with predictions for cloudy day with sure chances of rain till evening. We started the hike on a cloudy note and as we started the trail past Kori station it started pouring. However the weather started improving after a short while with clouds clearing up as we approached Hatonosu. From Hatonosu we headed towards Shiromaru dam. Enroute, we came across a nice cafe with great ambience and good location which tempted us to make a cafe stopover (http://www.gallerypoppo.com/). We enjoyed cake with coffee overlooking the gorge and by then the clouds had started to make way for the sun.

At Shiromaru dam we visited the fishing ladder. However a part of the trail was closed which meant we had to walk past the passing traffic for a small section before taking the walking trail to Okutama Station. We had a onsen stop at Meogi no-yu and then took the 16:57 train back to Tokyo with a dinner break at Akihabara. We were back at Tsukuba by 20:50.

Overall, barring the initial glitch with the weather it turned out to be a pleasant hike. Thanks for joining in and making it a nice day.