Komagane

The local tourist association has a multilingual guide site.

Komagane station is a stop on the JR Iida line. If coming from Tokyo, you need to change the train at least once and the last leg with the local train is slow. Fastest connection to Shinjuku takes 4 hr 15 min and costs ¥6410. Using only local trains will cut your costs to around ¥3000, but the travel time increases to more than 6 hours.

Highway bus is another option. There are highway buses from the surrounding major cities: Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagano, and Matsumoto. Note that there are two different stops in Komagane, one is the Komagane bus terminal near the station (5 min walk), the other is the Komagane IC stop on the Chuo expressway. The trip from Shinjuku takes 3½ hours as scheduled and the bus connections are frequent, about once per hour to and from each of the two stops. In Shinjuku, The buses depart from Keio Highway Bus terminal, just opposite the main building of Yodobashi Camera. One-way ticket costs ¥3700. However, the Chuo expressway suffers from frequent congestion near Tokyo and the last segment of the trip into Tokyo may take up to 2 hours on its own, making it no better than travelling exclusively by local trains. One trick would be to get off at Chuo-do Hino (中央道日野) and transfer at the Koshu-kaido (甲州街道) Tama Monorail station (7 min walk). This is especially useful if your accommodation is in western Tokyo, near Tachikawa.

The most interesting bus line for the traveller is the bus leaving from Komagane JR station, going through Komagane Kogen and terminating at Shirabidaira ropeway station. The bus will depart every half hour between 07:00 and 17:00, depending on the season, and is labeled clearly with a "Komagatake Ropeway Station" sign. Trip from the station to Shirabidaira will cost ¥1030 and to Komagane Kogen ¥370. During peak seasons, particularly in Fall, the buses and the ropeway can get very crowded. Extra buses will be dispatched if scheduled buses are unable to pick up all waiting passengers. These extra buses usually arrive within 5 minutes from when the scheduled bus leaves but they are also dispatched from the ropeway station as soon as the amount of waiting passengers reach a certain threshold. Extra buses from the ropeway station only run until the Suganodai bus terminal (菅の台バスターミナル).