Tadami Line

The Tadami Line runs 135.2 km from Aizu-Wakamatsu, the castle town of Fukushima Prefecture, to Koide in Niigata. For most of the way it follows the Tadami River into the mountains of Oku-Aizu, crossing the water again and again on iron bridges, before a long tunnel takes it under the prefectural border. The trains are one or two railcars, stop at every station and never go faster than 65 km/h; the whole line takes about four and a half hours.

In July 2011 heavy rain washed three of its bridges away beyond Aizu-Kawaguchi. JR East put the repairs at about ¥8.5 billion, and for eleven years a bus covered the gap. In 2017 Fukushima Prefecture agreed to take on the track of the damaged section so that JR East would run trains over it again, and on 1 October 2022 the whole line reopened, with people lining the valley to wave the first trains through.

It is a line for looking out of the window. Three trains a day run all the way, so plan the day around them, and take the morning one if you can.

Trains leave Aizu-Wakamatsu heading west, and for the first half hour swing round the southern edge of the Aizu basin through rice fields, calling at Aizu-Bange. At Aizu-Yanaizu the hills close in and the line meets the Tadami River, which it will follow for most of the next two hours.

The bridges of Oku-Aizu

Beyond Aizu-Hinohara the train crosses the No. 1 Tadami River Bridge, the steel arch the line is best known for, passes the three arches at Aizu-Miyashita and crosses the No. 3 bridge towards Hayato. The river is held back by a string of small dams, and their lakes are still enough on a calm morning to mirror the hills and the train. In 2021 seventeen of the line's structures, its Tadami River bridges among them, were listed as civil engineering heritage.

At Aizu-Kawaguchi, on the riverbank, trains often wait a few minutes. From here to Tadami is the section that was closed from 2011 to 2022: new bridges, the No. 6 and No. 7 among them, and the peak of Mt Gamō, 828 m, which the prefecture's guide calls the Matterhorn of Aizu.

Into Niigata

Past Tadami the line climbs beside Lake Tagokura, the reservoir of the dam that brought the railway this far in the 1950s, and enters the Rokujūrigoe Tunnel under the border. The road over the pass above is closed in winter, leaving the railway as the only link; in very heavy snow the trains stop too, and in the winter of 2025 snow closed the line on both sides of Tadami, the last part reopening only in mid-May. The line comes out in Niigata at Ōshirakawa and runs down the Aburuma valley to Koide, on the Jōetsu Line.

The trains

The line is worked by two types of diesel railcar. The KiHa E120, green and white, arrived in March 2020 and is based at Aizu-Wakamatsu; the KiHa 110 came from the Niigata end that July. Since the reopening both run the length of the line. Between them they replaced the KiHa 40 railcars that had run here since 1979. Two cars carry heritage colours: KiHa E120-2 in the old national railways' cream and red, and KiHa 110-223 in the green of the KiHa 40s it replaced.

Three trains a day run the whole line in each direction, every day of the year, with the same times at weekends. Every train stops at every station, and none needs a booking. Other trains run only part of the way, between Aizu-Wakamatsu and Aizu-Kawaguchi or between Ōshirakawa and Koide.

Aizu-Wakamatsu to Koide

Koide to Aizu-Wakamatsu

Good to know:

• Ride the river valley by day. The 06:08 from Aizu-Wakamatsu and the 13:12 from Koide pass the Tadami River bridges in daylight; the last train each way does most of the valley in the dark.
• Long stops. Trains wait 10 to 40 minutes at Aizu-Kawaguchi and Tadami to pass each other; the times above are departures.
• Kazekko, autumn 2026. The open-window sightseeing train leaves Aizu-Wakamatsu at 09:13, reaching Tadami at 11:56, and returns from Tadami at 13:13, on 3, 4, 10, 11, 12 and 17 October. Every seat is reserved.
• 5–9 October 2026. The 06:08 from Aizu-Wakamatsu runs only as far as Tadami.
• Winter. Snow can stop the trains, sometimes for weeks; check JR East's service information before setting out between December and April.

Times as of October 2026, from JR East's timetable. Check your date on JR East's Aizu-Wakamatsu station timetable (opens in a new tab).

The local trains need only an ordinary ticket, priced by distance: ¥2,750 from Aizu-Wakamatsu to Koide, half for children. Buy it at the ticket office at either end, because almost every station along the line is unstaffed and IC cards such as Suica cannot be used on it. The trains are driver-only, with no conductor on board.

The Kazekko sightseeing train is the one service that needs a booking: a reserved seat costs ¥840 on top of the fare, bookable through JR East's online reservations or at a JR ticket office. Fares checked October 2026 against JR East's timetable and its March 2026 fare table; Japanese yen.

The Tadami Line is a JR East line, and the JR passes cover it end to end, including the section whose track Fukushima Prefecture owns, since JR East runs the trains. The JR EAST PASS, ¥35,000 for five days, covers every JR East line, and so does the Japan Rail Pass, ¥50,000 for seven days. A pass holder still needs a reserved seat for the Kazekko.

For this journey alone, a pass is not worth buying: the whole line costs ¥2,750. It pays when the Tadami Line is one day of a longer trip. Aizu-Wakamatsu is on the Ban'etsu West Line from Kōriyama, on the Tōhoku Shinkansen, and Koide is on the Jōetsu Line, so the line makes a loop from Tokyo out on one shinkansen and back on the other; price that loop as single tickets before buying a pass.

Checked October 2026 against the JR EAST PASS (opens in a new tab) page and the Japan Rail Pass prices (opens in a new tab).

With three through trains a day, a stop along the way costs several hours, so pick one or two: the castle and the temple town at the Aizu end, the bridge viewpoint and the river villages in the middle, Tadami for the snow country.

A night at Aizu-Wakamatsu puts you on the 06:08, the best train of the day. A night along the line turns the journey into two easy days, with a hot-spring inn at Yanaizu or a family inn by the station at Tadami.

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