Nature
Kamikochi: 2 Live Cameras in Japan
A flat valley floor at 1,500 m on the Azusa river, with the Hotaka range to the north and Mount Yake to the south. Both cameras — Kappa-bashi and the bus terminal — are live video, and both play inside this page.
What you can see
Kamikochi is a long, narrow strip of flat ground on the floor of the Azusa valley. The Hotaka range stands to the north and Mount Yake to the south, and it was Yake's 1915 eruption that dammed the Azusa and created Taisho Pond. That landform is why you can stand on the valley floor and still look up at 3,000-metre ridgelines.
Kappa-bashi is the suspension bridge over the Azusa. Face upstream from it and the Hotaka range is straight ahead — the best-known view in Kamikochi, and also where everybody gathers. The number of people on the bridge tells you how busy the place is that day.
The bus terminal is the gateway to Kamikochi, looking at the same ridge through larch woods. At 1,500 m with no town lights anywhere near, a clear night turns the same framing into a star field.
Both streams come from the people who look after the place: Kappa-bashi from the Gosenjaku Hotel Kamikochi at the foot of the bridge, and the bus terminal from the Nature Parks Foundation, which is contracted to manage grounds inside the national park.
Cameras you can watch now: 2
2 video, 0 still. Tap one to open it in the camera list.
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Live video
Kappa-bashi, Kamikochi
Matsumoto, Nagano · Nature
The best-known view in Kamikochi: the Hotaka range standing beyond the suspension bridge over the Azusa river. The number of people on the bridge tells you how busy the valley is.
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Live video
Kamikochi bus terminal
Matsumoto, Nagano · Nature
The Hotaka range through larch woods, seen from the gateway to Kamikochi. At 1,500 m with no town lights nearby, on a clear night the same frame fills with stars.
When to watch
Kamikochi is open only from mid-April to mid-November (17 April to 15 November in 2026), and even then private cars cannot go in. The cameras open at any season and any hour, so you can have Kappa-bashi at dawn with nobody on it.
Morning is the better bet. Being a valley floor, it pools fog on cold clear nights, but once that lifts the late morning gives the sharpest ridgeline. Cloud builds over the Hotaka side through the afternoon, and in summer it hides the ridge more often than not.
Through the year, the larches turn yellow from mid to late October. For a few days each year there is snow on the upper Hotaka while the valley is still in autumn colour — two seasons in one frame.
If it isn't showing
Kamikochi sits on a valley floor ringed on three sides by 3,000-metre mountains, so its weather differs sharply from the city of Matsumoto down below. Cloud can settle into the valley alone while the city is clear, and just after the morning fog lifts the valley can be clearer than the city. Both are cameras out in the field, so rough weather costs you picture quality.
Where to find Kamikochi
Agencies publishing the cameras on this page
- Gosenjaku Hotel Kamikochi (Links free, no reuse) — Official site
- Nature Parks Foundation (Links free, no reuse) — Official site
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.