Japan’s hiking scene has an exciting new contender. After seven years in the making, the Hitachinokuni Long Trail in northern Ibaraki Prefecture fully opened on September 19, and at roughly 350km, it’s now the longest loop trail in the country.
The route links six cities and towns – Hitachi, Hitachiota, Takahagi, Kitaibaraki, Hitachiomiya and Daigo – and winds through what the Japanese call ‘satoyama’, the countryside where villages sit alongside mountains, meadows, ponds and rice fields. It runs all the way from the forested hills of the Okukuji area to the Pacific coast, so you get mountain views and sea air on the same trail.
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The trail passes Fukuroda Falls, one of Japan’s three most famous waterfalls, then climbs Mount Yamizo, which at 1,022m is the highest peak in Ibaraki Prefecture. It also takes in Namase Fuji, a rocky 406m peak that local hikers have nicknamed ‘Ibaraki’s Gendarme’ after a notoriously jagged ridge in the Japanese Alps.
The trail’s final 75km section, connecting Daigo and Hitachiomiya, completed the route’s 350km loop when it opened in September.
The prefecture worked with a local volunteer group, the Hitachinokuni Trail Club, to create the route, with around 5,000 volunteer shifts going into maintaining the paths. The club’s leader, Ikuo Wada, reportedly scouted some 10,000km of ground to plan it, and says the idea isn’t so much about hardcore hiking and more about a ‘walking journey’ that moves between the mountains and the villages. The first 14km section, between Shimonomiya and Fukuroda Falls, opened back in March 2021, and new sections have been added every year since.
Walkers clearly can’t wait to get stuck in. In a 2025 poll by the Japan Long Trail Association, it was voted the trail people most wanted to walk out of the organisation’s 29 member routes, according to Travel Tomorrow.
The good news for anyone who isn’t a seasoned trekker is that you don’t need to tackle the whole thing. Because it’s a loop, you can dip into individual sections and fit them around a wider trip. The trail is fairly low and rarely gets hit by heavy snow, so it can be walked all year round.
Northern Ibaraki is under two hours from Tokyo by train, which makes it an easy add-on to a city break. Go in autumn and you’ll catch the leaves turning around Fukuroda Falls. Want to warm up on something shorter first? Check out our pick of the best day and weekend hikes in and around Tokyo.
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