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Amanohashidate is a pine-covered sandbar across a bay in northern Kyoto Prefecture, and Ine is a fishing village of funaya, houses built over the water.
Where the two places are
Bus, Amanohashidate to Ine, about 1 h
A rough sketch of where things are. Bus time on Tango Kairiku Kotsu's local bus, 50–60 minutes.
Amanohashidate sits at the inner end of Miyazu Bay, and Ine in a small bay near the peninsula’s eastern tip. No railway links the two, so seeing both in a day almost always means a bus.
What there is to see
| Sight | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Walk through the funaya village | Ine | Free |
| Ine Bay boat (25 min) | Ine | ¥1,200 |
| View Land, the view through your legs | Hill south of the sandbar | ¥1,000 |
| Chion-ji and the swing bridge | South end of the sandbar | Free |
| Walk the pine sandbar | Amanohashidate | Free |
| Kasamatsu Park | Hill north of the sandbar | ¥800 |
Prices are per adult. View Land’s price covers the return lift or monorail and entry; Kasamatsu Park’s is the return cable car or chairlift.
Ine, a village over the water
About 230 funaya line Ine Bay: wooden boathouses with a boat garage at sea level and rooms upstairs. They were built so fishermen could pull their wooden boats out of the sea, away from rain, insects and rot, and people still live in them.
A walk along the shore leads up to a lookout over the boathouses. From the water, the Ine Bay boat takes 25 minutes to circle the bay, followed all the way by the seagulls it’s known for.
The boathouses and the houses opposite are private homes, so they’re not open to walk into, and photographing residents or their laundry without asking is rude.
Amanohashidate, one of Japan’s three great views
The sandbar runs about 3 km across the bay with roughly 8,000 pine trees, narrowing to about 20 m at one point. It’s officially one of Japan’s three most scenic views, with Matsushima and Miyajima.
View Land, on the hill to the south, is reached by chairlift or monorail. The local tradition up here is matanozoki: you turn your back to the bay, bend over and look through your legs. Upside down, the sandbar looks like a bridge into the sky.
Back down at the foot of the sandbar is Chion-ji Temple, with a two-story pagoda said to be about 500 years old. Right beside it, a small swing bridge turns whenever a boat passes, and across it the path runs out along the sandbar under the pines.
Across the water from the sandbar’s north end, Kasamatsu Park sits on a hillside reached by cable car or chairlift. Seen at an angle from here, locals say the sandbar looks like a dragon rising into the sky.
A tour day, hour by hour
08:00 departure → back 18:00–19:30, about 10–11.5 hours
- Bus and transfers about 6–7.5 h
- Ine about 2 h
- Amanohashidate about 2 h
From the itinerary of a typical bus tour from Osaka. Travel time is the whole day minus the two stops, so it includes any rest stops.
Tours leave Nippombashi in Osaka or Kyoto Station around 8 a.m., spend the morning in Ine and the afternoon at Amanohashidate, and turn back around 3:30 p.m.
Choosing a tour
From each tour's itinerary.
The Miyama version adds one more stop, Miyama Kayabuki-no-Sato, a hamlet of thatched-roof farmhouses. Some tours include View Land and the boat in the price and others leave them to pay on the day, so headline prices aren’t quite like for like.
Going without a tour
From Kyoto, the Hashidate limited express reaches Amanohashidate in about 2 hours, and Ine is a local bus ride further up the coast. Ine’s tourism office puts the trip at about 3 hours from Kyoto and 3.5 hours from Osaka, each way.
Some funaya have become small inns.
Where to stay
Sources
- JNTO: Amanohashidate Sandbar
- JNTO: Amanohashidate itinerary
- Ine Tourism Association: About Funaya
- Ine Tourism Association: To Ine’s visitors
- Ine Tourism Association: Access
- Tango Kairiku Kotsu: Ine Bay boat (Japanese)
- Tango Kairiku Kotsu: Kasamatsu cable car and chairlift (Japanese)
- Amanohashidate View Land: hours and prices (Japanese)