Kanagawa Course Overview
Kanagawa Prefecture is located almost in the center of the Japanese mainland. Kanagawa borders the prefecture of Tokyo. It is 2,416 sq. km in area, making it the fifth-smallest prefecture in Japan. Kanagawa has the second largest population in Japan, of 9.05 million people.
The climate is considered moderate (12). The prefecture of Kanagawa is the second prefecture the Tokai Nature Trail takes you through. I thought that it was also one of the hardest. There are many ups and downs though out the course. While other courses have long stretches of flat terrain, I found that Kanagawa portion of the trail to be made up of many steep inclines and descents.
The guide posts in Kanagawa have no English or Romaji, but they are generally well maintained and frequent. Since the Kanagawa course has a significant number of mountains I found that this prefecture had a plethora of camping sites, and little benches where you could rest. As you hike the Kanagawa area you will also encounter mountain huts where you may sleep inside for free.
This course starts at Mt. Shiro (城山) Mt. Shiro (城山) has an altitude of 670 m. It is also sometimes called Kobotoke Shiroyama (小仏城山).
From there you are presented with multiple routes you can take. These are not classified bypass routes, and they often meet up allowing you to return to the main route.
These routes take you to Mt. Takasasu (高指山) has an altitude of 1,174 m at the border of Yamanashi and Kanagawa. From Mt. Takasasu you are able to see Lake Yamanaka and Mt. Fuji. Mt. Takasasu (高指山) summit offers a good place to camp before heading down to the Yamanashi area.
The website guides serve as an overview of each prefectural course the Ebook goes into much more detail about each section, this is because the prefectural courses offer multiple routes.
The course overview of each prefecture shows the outline of the course, and some of the major points of interest. The Tokai trail offers many different routes, and the maps, even those on the trail, do not always show all courses. To address this issues I wrote a free guidebook that covers the complete trail.
