Both Sakamoto and Mt. Hiei are best covered on foot. For going between the two, you can use the Sakamoto Cable Car, which costs ¥840/1570 one-way/round-trip and runs daily from 8 AM to 5 PM once every 30 minutes. At over 2 km, this is the longest cable car in Japan and takes about 11 minutes for the journey. This cable car line was built in 1927 and refurbished in 1993. The European style cars have large windows with wonderful views of Lake Biwa.
A real pilgrim would of course scoff at mechanical contraptions and climb the mountain, which is fairly easy as this isn't really more than an oversized hill. The traditional route is a convenient path of mossy steps known as Honzaka æ¬å, starting from Sakamoto, but it's still 500 meters vertical to the top. There are also many other routes, with numerous small temples and waterfalls along the way, but watch out as signposting even in Japanese is lacking. You may see monkeys along the way as well.
