Great Walk, Great Respite From Urban Japan

About 50 minutes by local from Osaka, in Hyogo prefecture, you can hike along an abandoned railroad track through a series of tunnels. The hike is flat and follows a river through a beautiful gorge, and the tunnels are long enough that it is completely dark in the middle sections, so you need a flashlight or a fully-charged phone to walk safely. The well-prepared locals had headlamps. You start about 1km from Namaze Station, and walk to Takedao Station for the return trip. There’s a kombini in Namaze, and I bought some snacks for the end of the hike where there are these stairs with a beautiful view back into the river gorge and some cool bridges. It's moderately popular, so you can follow the small groups of hikers along the road to the trailhead (really just the place where you get on the train tracks). The whole thing took about 4 hours, including the train ride, so it was a kind of perfect morning away from urban Japan, and then back again. It will be getting better and better in the spring as trees and flowers start to bloom.