Japan's Mountain Lodges & Alpine Huts

About this book

Every summer night, thousands of people sleep above the clouds in Japan, in wooden houses nailed to ridges: a hot dinner at a long table, a futon in a shoulder-to-shoulder row, and a 4 a.m. start for the sunrise. The institution that makes it possible is the sangoya, the Japanese mountain hut — and until now it has had no complete English guide. This book gives it one: 200 entries in eight parts. It begins with the hut itself — staffed and unstaffed houses, emergency shelters, keepers and the bokka porters who carry a household up the mountain, reservations, the one-night-two-meals plan, water, toilets, drying rooms and lights-out. It then walks the great hut country region by region: the classic houses of the Northern Alps from Kamikōchi to Hakuba; the deep traverses of the Central and Southern Alps and the bath huts of Yatsugatake; the stone refuges and onsen bases of Hokkaidō and Tōhoku; the station huts of Mt Fuji and the near ranges of Tokyo; and the pilgrim lodges and summit huts of the western ranges, from the Kumano roads to Yakushima. A full part follows the hut through its year — opening and closing, snowfields, thunder season, Obon crowds and the winter silence — and a final part is the practical handbook: mountain plans, altitude, hypothermia, lightning, bears, rescue and insurance, water and kit, toilet manners and hut etiquette, down to the phrases that work at the counter. Seasons, charges and booking windows change, and this book never freezes them into promises: every entry closes by pointing to the official source, so your night at altitude is confirmed before it is trusted. For the hiker planning a first hut night, the traverser stringing a week of ridges together, and anyone who has ever looked up at a lit window on a dark mountain and wondered what life is like inside it.