Okutama: streambed wasabi farms and mountain forest, still inside Tokyo
🎫 Choose
Book at least 24 hours ahead — your guide needs a night to arrange it.
- Location
- 📍 Tokyo
- Duration
- ⏱ 7 hours
- Group size
- 👥 2–8 guests
- Guide language
- 🗣 English
- Tour type
- 👥 Small group
- Getting around
- ⛰ Steep or a long day
About this experience
Two hours from Shinjuku and still not out of Tokyo. Okutama is the city's mountain half: cedar forest, a reservoir, and wasabi terraces built directly into running streambeds — real wasabi only grows in cold moving water, never in a dry field.
Two hours by train from Shinjuku and still not out of Tokyo. Okutama is the city's other half — cedar forest, a reservoir, and wasabi terraces built directly into running streambeds. Real wasabi only grows in cold water that is MOVING; grown in a dry field it becomes a noticeably different plant.
That is also why almost everything sold as "wasabi" in restaurants is dyed horseradish. Here you see how the water is drawn off the stream above, run through each terrace and returned to the flow — and why a bed takes two years before it can be harvested. Then the grating: on sharkskin, in small circles, tasted within the first thirty seconds, because the heat disappears after that. Once you've had it fresh, the supermarket tube stops fooling you.
Lunch is soba and foraged greens at a mountain restaurant, then a walk through cedar forest down to the reservoir. Back in Shinjuku by late afternoon. This is the longest tour on the list — seven hours including the trains — and rated demanding: forest paths, uneven ground, and a long day.
✨ Highlights
- ◆Still inside Tokyo's boundary and already mountain forest
- ◆Wasabi terraces built into running streambeds — not a thing you see elsewhere
- ◆Fresh wasabi grated in front of you, nothing like the tube in restaurants
- ◆Your guide rides the train with you, both ways
🗺 Itinerary
- 📍Meeting point & time8:20 AM — Shinjuku Station, Chuo line platform (you travel with the guide)
- 8:30Train to Okutama, about an hour and three quarters
- 10:20Streambed wasabi terraces, and why the water has to keep moving
- 11:15Grating fresh wasabi on sharkskin, tasted on the spot
- 12:00Mountain lunch: soba and foraged greens
- 13:15A walk through cedar forest to the reservoir
- 14:30Back to Okutama Station and the train to Shinjuku
- The tour ends at the final stop, always a few minutes' walk from a train station. Want to keep going? Your guide will point you somewhere good nearby.
✓ What you get
- ✓English-speaking guide
- ✓Wasabi farm visit with fresh-grated tasting
- ✓A mountain lunch
- ✓Local transport from Okutama Station
✕ Not included
- ✕Shinjuku ↔ Okutama train fare
- ✕Anything bought locally
- ✕Alcoholic drinks