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Makino Metasequoia Avenue

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

metasequoiaavenueMakinoTakashimaautumn colour

Photo: Norihiro Kataoka / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) · original

What sets Makino Metasequoia Avenue apart from other natural sites in Shiga is how much depends on conditions outside anyone's control.

About 500 metasequoias line 2.4 kilometres of the approach road to the Makino highland, planted in 1981 as part of a fruit-growers' scheme and now grown tall enough to meet overhead. Metasequoia was known only as a fossil until living trees were found in China in the 1940s, so an avenue of them is a plantation of a species that was assumed extinct within living memory.

The trees are deciduous conifers, which is the reason this works in four distinct ways rather than one: bare grey columns against snow in winter, sharp new green in spring, deep shade in summer, and a rust-red canopy from late November into early December. The road is a public road with traffic on it, and the view everyone photographs is straight down the centre line, which is the practical thing to know before standing in it.

Plan your visit

Time to allow

45 minutes – 1 hour

Hours

Open at all hours

Closed: Open year-round

Best time to visit

Late November–early December for autumn colour | Late April–May for new growth | Winter for bare trees in snow

Entry fee

Free | Free parking at Makino Pick Land

Getting out there

Directions

Terakubo, Makino-cho, Takashima City, along the road to Makino Highland. Immediately by the Makino Pick Land bus stop, served from Makino Station on the JR Kosei Line by the Makino Highland line. Free and open at all hours; free parking at Makino Pick Land, with a temporary car park at the northern end of the avenue from mid-November to mid-December. The autumn colour festival runs from late November into early December. This is a live public road.

Beyond the guidebook

**It is a road with cars on it.** The centre-line shot everyone takes is taken from the carriageway. Traffic is light but it is not a park, and the local advice about this is repeated for a reason. **Late November to early December for the red.** The colour is rust rather than scarlet and it holds for around two weeks. The festival dates track it. **Winter is the underrated season.** Bare grey trunks in snow, with almost nobody there. The Kosei line runs through snow country and this stretch gets it. **Park at Pick Land and walk.** Free, at the southern end, with the temporary northern car park added only in the autumn window. **Planted in 1981.** This is not an old avenue. It works because the species grows fast and because 500 of anything in a straight line for 2.4 kilometres does something to the eye. **Makino Highland is at the top.** Camping, a hot spring and the trailhead for the Nosaka mountains, which is what the road was built to reach.

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