Nokogiriyama

Nokogiriyama means saw mountain, for the profile left by two and a half centuries of quarrying - the Boshu stone taken from here went into buildings across Edo and Yokohama, and the extraction left vertical cut faces, square shafts and a plateau of sheer walls that look engineered because they are. Nihonji, a temple founded by tradition in 725, occupies the mountain, and the quarry work and the temple work overlap: between 1780 and 1798 a sculptor and his apprentices carved about 1,500 stone arhats into niches along the paths, each one different, many damaged in the nineteenth century and progressively restored. A Buddha of 31 metres, the largest carved stone image in Japan, was cut from the rock face in the same period and recut in the 1960s. Jigoku Nozoki, hell lookout, is a slab of quarried rock projecting over a hundred-metre drop.

The main sights

• Quarry faces - vertical cut walls left by two and a half centuries of stone extraction.
• 1,500 arhats - stone figures carved into niches between 1780 and 1798, each different.
• A 31-metre Buddha - the largest carved stone image in Japan, cut from the rock face.
• Jigoku Nozoki - a projecting slab over a drop of about a hundred metres.

When to go

All year; spring and autumn for comfort. Half a day.

What to expect

There are a great many steps even with the ropeway - the site is spread over a mountain. Entry and ropeway are charged separately. The hell lookout queues for photographs and the drop is real. Summer is hot with limited shade on the upper paths.

Nearby

Tokyo Bay ferries cross from Kurihama; Kamogawa is south on the coast.

Key facts