Mount Fuji (Kawaguchiko)

Top things to do in Mount Fuji (Kawaguchiko)

1. 01

   Chureito Pagoda - the red five-storey pagoda above the town

   scenic history 👍 Popular

   The image that sells Japan abroad: a vermilion pagoda on a wooded shoulder with the cone standing directly behind it, and for a couple of weeks in April a screen of cherry blossom in between. It sits in a small shrine park above Fujiyoshida, up just under four hundred stone steps from the car park with a longer sloped path for anyone who would rather not take them, and the viewing platform is small enough that at sunrise in autumn it is shoulder to shoulder. Go at first light or accept the queue. It is worth knowing that the pagoda is a war memorial raised for the town's dead in the 1960s, which is easy to miss when every single person on the deck is facing the other way.

2. 02

   The Yoshida Trail - walking to the summit from the 5th Station

   hiking adventure 👍 Popular

   The standard route up and the one most climbers take: a relentless zigzag of volcanic gravel and stepped rock from the road head at about 2,300 m to the crater rim at 3,776 m, with a line of mountain huts across the upper third where you book a bunk, eat curry and sleep a few hours before setting off again in the dark. The object is goraiko, the sunrise watched from above the cloud with the Pacific on the horizon, and then a walk around the crater lip. There is no climbing in it, no rope and no exposure, but there is altitude, wind, temperatures near freezing at the top in the middle of summer and roughly six hours of unshaded uphill on loose ground. The Yamanashi side gates the trail with a booked entry slot, a daily cap and a gate closed overnight to anyone without a hut reservation, aimed squarely at the unprepared overnight dash; check the current rules before you plan the night, because they have been tightened more than once.

3. 03

   Fuji Subaru Line 5th Station - as high as the road goes

   scenic adventure

   A toll road switchbacks up through the forest from the lakes to a shelf at about 2,300 m, roughly halfway up by height, where a cluster of shops, a small shrine and a stable of horses sit above the treeline. It is where the climb starts and also the easiest way for anyone not climbing to stand on the mountain, look down on the cloud deck and walk a level traverse along the flank. Two access rules govern it: the road shuts to private cars through the busiest weeks of the climbing season, when a shuttle runs up from a car park at the bottom instead, and it closes altogether once snow settles, so for much of the winter the highest thing you can drive to is the lake shore. Bring a layer, since it runs well over ten degrees colder up there than down at the water.

4. 04

   Lake Kawaguchi north shore - the reflection and the maple corridor

   scenic nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   The canonical angle. From the far side of the lake the mountain sits square above the water, and on a still cold morning it doubles in the surface into what the Japanese call the upside-down Fuji. A flower park at the north-eastern corner keeps a planted foreground going through the year, lavender in the warm months and a low red groundcover in autumn, and a short avenue of maples along a stream nearby closes into a tunnel of red that is lit at night for a few weeks in November. The lakeside path runs most of the way round and is flat enough to cycle in an easy afternoon. The enemy here is the hour rather than the season: cloud builds on the mountain by mid-morning on most days of the year, and the wind roughens the water and takes the reflection with it.

5. 05

   Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine - where the pilgrim route starts

   history culture arts hiking ⭐ Highly recommended

   The best thing in Fujiyoshida and quiet on most days. A gravel avenue runs between enormous cedars to a huge wooden torii and a dark, mossy shrine complex at the foot of the mountain, and behind the halls a gate marks the beginning of the original walking route to the summit, the one pilgrims used for centuries before a road cut out the bottom two thirds of it. Confraternities from Edo sent parties here in white robes every summer and lodged them in pilgrim houses down in the town, several of which still stand on the old street. Walking even the first hour of that old trail up through the forest tells you more about what this mountain has meant than a day at the 5th Station will.

6. 06

   Lake Motosu and Nakanokura Pass - the view off the banknote

   scenic off beaten path ⭐ Highly recommended

   The westernmost and deepest of the five lakes, far quieter than the eastern pair, with a view of the mountain across the water so canonical that it has been printed on Japanese banknotes. The exact angle is not from the shore but from a short steep climb to a pass above the northern side, around half an hour up from the road, and there is usually almost nobody on it. The lake never freezes, holds its own landlocked salmon and is ringed by the campgrounds where Japanese families spend the summer. You need a car or a patient reading of the bus timetable to get to this end of the chain, which is exactly why it stays as it is.

7. 07

   Aokigahara and the lava caves - the forest grown on an eruption

   nature wildlife off beaten path hiking

   A dense, oddly level forest of hemlock and cypress rooted straight onto the lava that poured off the north-west flank in the ninth century, so the ground beneath the moss is black rock full of holes and the trees stand on stilts of exposed root. Two lava tubes underneath are open and lit: one keeps ice on its shelves all year, the other is a low, cold crawl where silkworm eggs were once stored through the warm months. The forest carries a grim reputation in popular culture that has very little to do with what a marked trail through it is actually like, which is green, silent and strange. Stay on the marked paths, out of respect and because the terrain genuinely eats landmarks.

8. 08

   Oshino Hakkai - eight ponds of filtered snowmelt

   scenic nature wildlife

   A hamlet on the plain between two of the lakes where meltwater that soaked into the mountain decades ago surfaces again through lava into eight ponds so clear that the weed and the bottom look magnified. Thatched roofs, a water wheel, fat carp and the cone standing over the lot of it: genuinely lovely, and genuinely overrun from mid-morning when the coaches arrive, with the ponds railed off and a replica farmhouse charging at the gate. Come at opening, then walk the surrounding lanes and paddy edges rather than only circling the ponds, and most of what earned it the listing comes back.

9. 09

   Mt Kachi Kachi Ropeway - the cable car to the lake overlook

   scenic

   Three minutes of cable car from the eastern end of Lake Kawaguchi up to a deck at around 1,075 m on Mount Tenjo, with the whole lake laid out below and the mountain filling the other half of the frame. It takes its name from a grim old folktale about a rabbit and a raccoon dog that ends in fire and drowning, and the summit station leans into that hard with statues, bells and rabbit-shaped everything. A trail carries on up the ridge behind the deck for anyone who wants an hour of proper walking with the view improving as they go, and there is a swing seat out over the drop for photographs.

10. 10

    Honcho-dori, Fujiyoshida - the retro street with the mountain at the end

    scenic off beaten path

    A wide, faded shopping street of low shopfronts, painted signboards and overhead wires that happens to point straight at the mountain, so from the pavement the cone appears to be parked at the end of the road. The photograph went around the world and the pedestrian crossing now has a permanent scrum, barriers and marshals, after years of people standing in live traffic to get it. Take the shot from the footpath, and then give the street twenty minutes of actual attention: it is a real, slowly emptying provincial high street in a town that used to weave textiles, which is a more interesting thing than its one picture.

11. 11

    Fuji-Q Highland - record-chasing coasters under the volcano

    adventure

    A theme park wedged between Fujiyoshida and the lake that has spent thirty years chasing world records: one of the steepest drops ever built, a coaster that turns you through fourteen inversions, and a tall old-school out-and-back from the 1990s that still rides better than most of them. Riding a coaster with a volcano filling the sky is the whole selling point, and the park also runs an enormous haunted-hospital walkthrough with a reputation of its own. Queues get long on weekends and through the school holidays, and the local-line station sits at the gate, so it works as a half day off the sightseeing.

12. 12

    Kubota Itchiku Art Museum - dyed kimono as landscape painting

    culture arts

    On the northern shore, a small museum built by one man around his attempt to revive a lost Muromachi dyeing technique and then use it at a scale nobody had tried: enormous kimono hung side by side so their patterns run continuously across the whole group into a single mountain range, an autumn forest, or the sun going down. The building is as unusual as the work, a domed hall of raw curved timber behind a coral gateway, with a garden of small waterfalls climbing the slope and a tea room facing the mountain. Quiet, unhurried and completely unlike anything else at the lakes.

Getting to & around Mount Fuji (Kawaguchiko)

Know before you go