Top Activities on the Ground in Saitama Prefecture

Most guests meet us at Seibu-Kyujo-mae Station (9:30). Ikebukuro (8:30) is also available; your guide travels with you by train. Walk the forest widely believed to have inspired My Neighbor Totoro with a local guide who lives nearby and knows these trails in every season. It's a small-group tour (max 4 guests), so we keep an easy pace with plenty of photo stops. The Sayama Hills are not a theme park. Since the early 1990s, local people have bought this woodland plot by plot to protect it, and each saved plot is numbered as a "Totoro Forest." You walk Totoro Forest No. 1, hear how it was saved, and learn to spot the birds and plants that live here. Then visit a small Shinto shrine few tourists find, look out over Lake Sayama, and finish with fresh matcha and local Sayama tea at a family-run tea shop, a stop past guests call a highlight. Cherry blossoms in spring, deep green shade in summer, red and gold leaves in autumn: a quiet day in nature, one hour from central Tokyo.