Kanto with kids: The Tokyo area's best family outdoor adventures
Many equate the Kanto area with Tokyo’s vast concrete sprawl. But the seven-prefecture region -- home to 42 million people -- extends from vertiginous, pine-clad mountains in Gunma in the north to the semitropical Ogasawara Islands in the south.
This means plenty of adventures await within its 32,000 square kilometers. Here are five of the best, road-tested by our resident parents.
Raft the Tone River
In addition to supplying Tokyo with drinking water, Japan’s second longest river also provides some of the best white-water rafting in the country.
During spring snowmelt -- and this year in late summer thanks to unusually heavy rains -- the river boasts adrenaline-inducing grade-four rapids.
A number of outdoor adventure companies based in the historic hot-spring town Minakami operate rafting and kayaking tours along the rapid-filled Momijikyo section in Gunma Prefecture.
Among them, Canyons, run by affable Kiwi Mike Harris, is one of the largest and caters to kids as young as six.
Heavy spring snowmelt from Gunma’s lofty peaks raises the Tone’s level enough to allow for heart-stopping full-day tours, with powerful waves that threaten to wash small ones overboard.
In summer, the river offers the gentler prospect of half-day junkets complimented by swimming and jumping from its rocky banks.
The Tone offers a mixed bag of scenery, meandering past verdant wooded ravines and fading Bubble-era hot spring hotels that seem to spring straight from a Hayao Miyazaki film.
Canyons provides bilingual guides and all the equipment you need except a bathing suit.
Getting there: Minakami is less than three hours from central Tokyo via the Shinkansen Joetsu and Takasaki train lines or Kanetsu expressway.
Canyons; +81 (0) 278 72 2811; canyons.jp
Ride Odawara’s zip lines
High in a grove of lofty Japanese cedar trees, groups of intrepid children and adults are negotiating a suspended maze of ropes, ladders and lines with names like Tibetan Bridge and Tarzan Swing.
Welcome to Forest Adventure, a French NPO whose blend of tree climbing and zip lining -- riding wires via a harness attached to a pulley -- has taken off worldwide in recent years.
With over 500 locations in France, the company arrived in Japan in 2006 and already has 11 courses across the country. Among them, the Odawara park about an hour southwest of Tokyo is not only the most accessible but also the most kid friendly.
We arrive on a sunny fall morning, and are soon strapping on heavy duty mountaineering harnesses and carabineers, along with a pulley system -- Forest Adventure’s key zip line innovation.
A brief practice session with kindly park manager Takuo Shibuya and we are off, left to our own devices to negotiate a progressively difficult series of treetop challenges.
With the longest course offering eight kid-friendly zip lines open to children as young as the first grade, the Odawara Forest Adventure boasts of being a three-generation experience.
Our own younger generation is at first put off by the idea of swinging into thin air from 10-meter-high platforms, but by the end of the two-hour course he is zipping along through the trees like any fine young Tarzan.
Popular with folk from nearby U.S. military bases and corporate team builders as well as thrill-seeking nature-deprived locals, Forest Adventure Odawara gets crowded. Arrive early to maximize your zip fun.
Getting there: One hour from central Tokyo via the Odakyu and JR lines, or Tomei Expressway and Odawara-Atsugi Road.
Forest Adventure; +81 (0) 80 4330 4030; www.foret-aventure.jp
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