Amarube Sky Station
licensed photographCheng-en Cheng / CC BY-SA 2.0

North Hyogo · AmarubeNo.1148★★Open in map →

Amarube Sky Station

— Walkway on the piers of a former railway trestle

historyOff the trail — and worth it

A public walkway laid across three surviving piers of the old Amarube railway trestle, high above a fishing village on the Sea of Japan. A glass lift runs up from the roadside, and there is no admission charge.

  1. FromKinosaki Onsen Station
  2. ~40 minJR local, ~10 trains a day
  3. Get off atAmarube Station (JR San'in Main Line)
  4. From there
  5. Amarube Sky Station
Directions ↗

The sweet spot

This is a signposted, free attraction next to a station, so it is not hidden. What keeps it calm is the timetable rather than obscurity: trains here are few, and in the stretch between two of them the deck often holds only a handful of people.

Where it is

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What to look for — in walking order

Sora-no-Eki, the surviving trackCheng-en Cheng / CC BY-SA 2.0
  1. Amarube Station platforman unstaffed halt on the cliffside at bridge height, with the walkway leading off it
  2. The surviving trackoriginal rail and sleepers at the far end, cut off where the trestle once continued
  3. Amarube Baythe cove, its breakwater and the headlands of the San'in coast, seen over the village roofs
  4. The Crystal Tower lifta glass-walled lift joining the road below to the deck above
  5. Michi-no-Eki Amarubethe roadside station under the bridge, with a shop, a canteen and salvaged parts of the old trestle on show

How to actually get there

  1. Kinosaki Onsen Station → Amarube Station (JR San'in Main Line local, about 40 min, no change).
  2. Amarube Station → the Sky Station walkway (level with the platform, straight off the end of it).
  3. Walk out to the surviving track, then take the Crystal Tower lift down to Michi-no-Eki Amarube.
  4. Fix your return departure from the platform board before the next long interval opens up.
JR San'in Main Line, direct from Kinosaki Onsen
Kinosaki Onsen Station →(JR San'in Main Line local, about 40 min)→ Amarube Station. No change of train. Only about ten locals a day work this stretch, so check the departure before you leave the onsen town. Kinosaki Onsen itself is reached by limited express from Kyoto and Osaka.
Returning east from Amarube Station
Trains back toward Kasumi, Toyooka and Kinosaki Onsen leave from the same platform. The last one of the day goes in the evening; there is nothing late at night. Because the intervals are long, fix your return departure before you walk out onto the deck.
Directions from my location (Google Maps) ↗

About the place

Amarube is a fishing village packed into a cleft in the San'in coast. The railway does not drop into the cleft; it crosses above the roofs. When the steel trestle that did that job was replaced, the piers on the station side were left standing and decked over as a public walkway. The deck sits about 40 metres above the village, ends in a length of original rail and sleepers, and faces straight out across Amarube Bay. From the road below, a fully glazed lift called the Crystal Tower carries you up to it.

How to enjoy it

The lift starts running at six in the morning and takes about 45 seconds, which puts the deck within reach far earlier than most sights in Japan. The constraint is the trains rather than the opening time: departures cluster in the early morning, then thin out to gaps of more than two hours, so read the platform board and settle your return before you go out onto the walkway. If the timing falls right, ride one stop east to Yoroi and come back — the train crosses the bridge you were just standing beside.

Background & history

The steel trestle was completed in 1912, the largest of its type in Japan at the time, and it carried the San'in Main Line for almost a century. Its exposure was also its weakness. On 28 December 1986 a winter gale blew a train off the deck and six people died; after that the line stopped whenever the wind rose. A concrete bridge with wind shields took over the crossing in 2010. Rather than scrap the whole structure, the piers nearest the station were kept where they stood and opened to visitors.

Before you go

Cash
The walkway and the lift are free. Amarube is an unstaffed station and fares on the local trains here are settled in cash rather than by IC card, so carry coins and small notes.
Before you go
The deck is outdoors and nothing shelters it at that height, so it closes when the weather turns. Wind is what decided the fate of the old bridge. The lift runs on into the night, and the tower is lit in colours that change with the season.
Another way
By car it is a couple of minutes from the Amarube interchange on the Sanin-Kinki Expressway, with parking at Michi-no-Eki Amarube directly under the bridge. From the west, the same San'in Main Line comes in from Hamasaka and Tottori.
After you get off
The platform at Amarube Station stands at almost the same height as the walkway, so arriving by train you step off and walk straight onto it. Coming from the road, take the glass lift up from beside the roadside station.