This - believe it or not (go ahead and believe it, it's true!), is only a 55-minute train ride from central Tokyo, plus the 30 minutes or so it takes to walk/hike to this point.  If you take either the cable-car or chair-lift up, there's hardly any hiking involved at all.  Being so near to Tokyo, parts of Takaozan can seem a bit overrun, but there is an extensive network of trails and some of them are as in this picture - off the beaten path and quite nice.               Copyright 2004 - Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon, Images Through Glass, Tokyo