Kanazawa to Tateyama Kurobe via Toyama/Nagano

Hi all

I will be staying 3 days/ 2 nights in Kanazawa. On the 2nd, we would like to explore the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route.

Question is, is it better for me to travel from Kanazawa station to Toyama station (20min journey)and start the alpine route from there or start from Nagano station(1.5 hour journey)

I read from reviews that if starting from Nagano station, the queue for the cable car is much lesser compared to starting from Toyama station(from this direction, the queue for cable car was 3 hours).

What are your opinions?

Hi!

The 2nd of what month? Do you mean February 2nd? If you're talking February 2nd or March 2nd, or even April 2nd, you're not doing the Alpine Route as it is closed.

If you mean on the 2nd day of your 3 night stay in Kanazawa, I think that is going to be an awful long day to then return back to Kanazawa when you are done.

Starting from Kanazawa it makes sense to start in Toyama and finish in Nagano prefecture unless you are traveling in November in which makes it is recommended you start in Nagano because part of the route (Bijodaira to Murodo) can be closed. Going by Hyperdia the trip by train is a lot longer than 1.5 hours from Kanazawa to Shinano-Omachi. I'm getting more like 3 hours and that doesn't include waiting/timing for the bus from Shinano-Omachi to Ogizawa just to start the route. If you take the very limited bus from Nagano station to Ogizawa you're still looking at 2 hours on a bus plus the 1 hour on the train between Nagano and Kanazawa. And again, the schedule is limited and you need to time for a specific bus.

You should probably just try to book using the bilingual online reservation system linked to from this website for the cable car trip on the route assuming again that you are talking about a time period the route is open.

Good luck!

Hi rkold, I will be in Kanazawa on 20-22 April, when the route is open.

I was thinking of taking the train from Kanazawa to nagano station and from there take the bus to Ogizawa station. It will be a long journey in the morning but I thought best to do the long journey in the morning rather than in the evening. Finishing at Toyama then would be a short ride back to Kanazawa.

I didn�ft know the cable car ride can be booked online. Thanks for this info.

Hi

It will be a long journey and you really need to be at Nagano Station before 9:00 am as these are the only buses: https://www.alpen-route.com/en/timetable/others01.html as the 10:30 bus will not get you to Ogisawa until after noon and by then you're only really going to have 5 hours of sunlight for the Alpine Route. To make the 9:00 am bus you have to leave no later than the 7:43, though it will get you to Nagano Station at 8:53 which only gives you 7 minutes to get your ticket and get to the bus. I don't know your sense of direction and how easy this will be for you, for some people it isn't so bad, for others they would not make the bus. The 7:23 only gets you in 3 minutes earlier, so isn't much help and the 7:00 gets you in closer to 8, but not early enough to make the 8:00 bus. If you're not staying walking distance to Kanazawa station make sure to include travel times.

Honestly, it makes more sense to do this on your final day in Kanazawa and end in Nagano or possibly Matsumoto, depending on where you plan to go to next. I think backtracking to Kanazawa is not worth it.

If you do start in Toyama, be aware that the last bus is 16:30 back to Nagano.

Hi, if starting from Nagano, you ideally need to get on the bus from outside Nagano Station at 9am (or earlier at 8.15) to give you enough time.

Have you thought about making the trip one-way and forwarding your luggage to the other side?

We did this when we visited last year.... we forwarded luggage from Nagano train station to our hotel in Toyama

if interested we wrote a blog post about how to do it
https://bit.ly/2CYuCeL