Nokogiriyama is a mountain with a 329-meter summit in Chiba Prefecture. The name means “Sawtooth Mountain,” and when you see its jagged Jigoku Nozoki (View of Hell), it does live up to the sawtooth image. The mountain’s steep cliffs rise up from the Boso Peninsula and Tokyo Bay, and though the view during the day is far from hellish, just imagine looking down from that precipitous drop-off at night. It might really feel like gazing down into a dark, bottomless pit.
Nokogiriyama was once the site of a stone quarry, and you can still see a huge relief of the goddess Kannon cut into one wall among the ruins there. It’s worth remembering that the stone steps leading up and down the mountain were shaped by human hands as well. There’s also a Daibutsu, or giant Buddha statue, on the grounds of the mountain temple, Nihon-ji.
On weekends and holidays like Umi no Hi (Marine Day, the third Monday in July, when this picture was taken), you can reach Hama-Kanaya Station and the ropeway to Nokogiriyama via the Shinjuku Sazanami train. It’s a seasonal version of the limited express Sazanami train, which otherwise runs year-round from Tokyo Station to Tateyama.