Anime Pilgrimage / Scene Hunting in Hanno Alps
Welcome to Hanno City, Saitama Pref.
Good Morning Internet,
Yama no Susume (Encouragement of Climb) is a slice of life short anime (less than 15 minutes per episode) about high school girls doing cute climbing/hiking stuff. It’s cute, it’s short, and it’s the anime that spark my interest in hiking. For real tho, the anime made it looks easy to hike various trails. The animators did a great job of making the anime realistic. Back in 2019, I tried one of the routes that those girls took around Hanno, Saitama. To my surprise, it is accurate enough that I can use the episode as my guide.
There are a lot of mountains that those girls have hiked in the series. The series itself has 3 seasons (49 episodes in total), so I have a lot of routes to chose from. Heck, they even climbed Mount Fuji. Hanno Alps (not the actual hiking route name) piqued my interest.
Hanno Alps was featured in Season 3 Episode 3 (Episode 39 overall) and Aoi-chan, the main character, did a detailed route overview. In the anime, the main characters go to Mt. Tenkaku and Mt. Ootaka. The hike starts from Higashi-Agano Station on Seibu Ikebukuro Line.
The route from Higashi-Agano Station to Mt. Tenkaku is straight forward as mentioned in the anime. I have no issue hiking that part. The second part, however, is very different than what was told in the anime. I wore jeans and a batik shirt (it’s Friday) with little to no food supply. I brought several bottles of water, but that’s it. I mean, if a high school anime girl can do it, it must be easy right? I was wrong
Where did I go wrong?
Upon reaching the Mt. Tenkaku peak, I looked at my phone and re-watched the anime. “oh okay only 1-2 hours more to reach Mt. Ootaka”. That is where I was wrong. In the anime, Aoi-chan had some food and water. But, upon reaching Mt. Tenkaku, she was very exhausted and out of food supply. Luckily, her friend, Kokona-chan found her sleeping on the bench. Kokona-chan is a middle school girl! She shared some food and together they climb Mt. Ootaka and go home.
I still have some stamina when I reached Mt. Tenkaku, but I didn’t have any food nor water. I chose to go ahead as I still have a plan for Chichibu Pilgrimage / Scene Hunting, It took me about 2 hours to reach Mt. Tenkaku, so it’s a waste if I go back to where I started. I kept walking. 1 hour…. 2 hours…. I got lost. I had walked for 4 hours now, and I’m out of breath. I found a large boulder and decided to sit there to recover my stamina. I opened my phone, checked the anime… I can’t find this boulder in the anime! Checking google maps… No signal! Checking the paper map and the sign in a nearby tree… I can’t read kanji! I gave up. I sat there waiting for other hikers and asked for help.
Hope!
“Daijoubu? (Are you okay?)” It felt like a dream. An old man approached me and offering some help! He gave me bottled water and asked me where I was going. “Ootakayama, soshite, Eki! (Mt. Ootaka and train station!)”. He nodded and smiled. He asked me where I’m from because my clothes look familiar. Apparently, he used to work in Jakarta and can speak a little Bahasa Indonesia. We chat along the way.
I can’t remember his name nor the conversation. I was very tired and can’t really focus. He guides me through the woods. One hour has passed, and we reached Mt. Ootaka. He took some pictures, but I forgot to take pictures for myself. Another hour passed, and we finally hiked down to Agano Station. I want to say thank you to the man, but he disappeared into the mountain again. I didn’t get the chance to say thank you
Anyway, here are some anime in real life edit for this pilgrimage
So, I spent 6+ hours hiking that day and went to Chichibu afterward. It was fun but exhasuting.
This is me on the train back to Tokyo
This page uses images from the anime for educational purposes only. It is not intended for commercial use (no ads in this page) and / or to infringe any copyright from the original works and owners
Original Visit Date: March 2019
