Takato Transportation

From Takato to Tokyo or vice-versa in season is easiest with the JR Shinjuku-Takato express bus. The JR bus leaves from the Sakura hotel (at the lake) and the busstation. It takes you to Shinjuku in Tokyo. It goes 3 times a day.

On this bus we met another nice lady. She even spoke a bit dutch...
She guided us to the right train from Shinjuku towards our hotel. Thank you, Shieko Matsuura from Chiba!

If you decide to use public transport, this is where you will enter Takato. The Takato busstation. In season there is a special shuttlebus going to the cherryblossom park.
If you are in the mood for a walk think again: it is more then 1 kilometer and it is uphill......

How to get to Takato:
We took a train from Matsumoto, had to tranfer once to get to Inashi. From there we had to take the bus. We were lucky that more people were taking this route otherwise we would have some problems. But a nice lady guided us from the transfer station to Takato.
Thank you, Tomoko Yanagida from Nakano !

As most visitors do come with their own car the traffic is regulated by making many streets one way streets. It seems to work in some parts of Takato. But to get into Takato they all have to take the same road.

As the Sakura season is only one or two weeks everybody visits in the same period. The cars are travelling in rows. When we arrived with the bus from Ina it took us half an hour to go 500 meters forwards.
So think twice before going by car in the season.........

There are many tourbusses on the parkinglot of the castle ruins park. This suggests it is not difficult to join a tour to Takato.