Ippukucho / CC BY 3.0

Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route

立山黒部アルペンルート

Toyama · Chubu

Crossing the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route end to end takes 6–8 hours including transfers, so it is a whole day rather than a stop on the way to somewhere else. Six linked vehicles — cablecar, highland bus, tunnel electric bus, ropeway, cable car and the Kanden tunnel buses — climb from Tateyama Station in Toyama over Murodo at 2,450 m and down to Ogizawa in Nagano. Turning back at Murodo instead of crossing is the shorter and cheaper option and is what most one-day visitors actually do. Japan's last trolleybus ran this tunnel until 30 November 2024 and was replaced by electric buses in April 2025, so the trolleybus ride still described in many guides no longer exists. The route is shut by snow from 1 December to mid-April, and the Yuki-no-Otani snow corridor at Murodo stands only from the mid-April opening until late June.

Best season: Spring · Summer · Autumn
Crowd level: Popular
Rating: 4.5· 52 reviews
Opening hours: Seasonal — see below
Admission: Through fare Tateyama Station → Ogizawa ¥10,940 (adult, official fare table current as of 27 February 2026). Tateyama → Murodo and back, the common one-day option, is ¥12,300 return (¥6,850 one way). Fares are charged per section and there is no single discount ticket covering the whole crossing.

Closures

Seasonal: open 15 April – 30 November, closed entirely 1 December – 14 April.

Note

Departure times differ by section and by period and are published as dated timetables rather than fixed daily hours.
The full traverse needs 6–8 hours with transfers, so it has to be started in the morning — check the dated timetable for your travel date before committing the day to it.

How to get there

From Nagoya Station · ~3h 28m by car