Hatenashi Village

Hatenashi is a handful of farmhouses on a slope above the Totsukawa Onsen hot spring area, in the far south of Nara Prefecture near the Wakayama border. It sits halfway up the Hatenashi Pass on the Kohechi, the Kumano Kodo route from Koyasan to Kumano Hongu Taisha, and the trail is literally the path in front of people's houses. Totsukawa village calls it the village in the sky because you can see across the Hatenashi mountains from here, and it was picked for the Nihon no Sato 100 list of Japanese rural landscapes. There is not much to do except look: fields, spring water, a stone path, ridges fading into the distance. Getting here is the work. From Totsukawa Onsen it is about 15 minutes on foot to the trailhead, then roughly 40 minutes of steep stone steps with almost no flat ground. Most people walk back down the same way. Hikers with a full day can continue over the 1,114 m pass to Yakio on the Kumano River; 33 Kannon statues line the way up. People live here, so keep your voice down, stay off fields and private land, do not fly drones, and do not come at night or early in the morning.