Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route — Japan's Roof at 3,000 Meters

The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route is 90 kilometers of cable cars, ropeways, trolley buses, and highland coaches cutting through the Northern Japan Alps at elevations up to 2,450 meters. It runs April through November and connects Toyama to Nagano. The headline attraction is the Tateyama Snow Corridor (Yuki no Otani) at Murodo Plateau—mid-April through June, buses drive through a canyon carved into snow walls that hit 20 meters high in places, stacked from winter snowfall that exceeds 8 meters annually. The route also passes Kurobe Dam (186 meters, Japan's tallest) and gives you views of Mt. Tateyama (3,015m), one of Japan's three sacred peaks. You're not hiking this—you're riding six different vehicles through tunnels blasted through mountains, over valleys on ropeways, and across plateaus where no roads exist. The engineering is the point as much as the scenery. Tateyama Station to Ogizawa takes 6-7 hours one-way if you stop to look at things. Most people do it one-way and continue to Nagano; doubling back is expensive and repetitive.