Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park

Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Fuji-Hakone-Izu is the most visited national park in Japan, and it is not one place but four, scattered across four prefectures within two hours of Tokyo, so that the first step is to decide which of them one means. Hakone, an hour and a half from Shinjuku by the Odakyu Romancecar train, is the classic overnight or day trip, a hot-spring district in an old volcanic crater, seen by way of a famous circuit of transport that the Hakone Freepass, sold by the railway, covers: a switchback mountain train to Gora, a funicular, a ropeway over the steaming sulphur vents of Owakudani, where eggs boiled black in the hot pools are sold, down to Lake Ashi, across which replica pirate ships sail to the cedar avenue and the torii of Hakone shrine standing in the water, with Fuji behind it if the weather permits.

The Fuji Five Lakes, reached by bus or train from Shinjuku to Kawaguchiko in about two hours, offer the best views of the mountain, from the north shore of Lake Kawaguchi and the Chureito pagoda at Fujiyoshida. The coach day tours from Tokyo typically combine the Fuji Subaru Line fifth station, halfway up the mountain by road, with Lake Ashi and the ropeway, and return by bullet train. Climbing Fuji itself is possible only in the official season, and since 2024 the most popular route, the Yoshida trail, has had a gate, a compulsory fee, a daily limit of four thousand climbers and a closing time in the afternoon for those without a hut reservation. The Izu peninsula, with its onsen towns, coastal walks and wasabi farms, and the volcanic Izu islands, reached by ferry, are the quieter parts.

Visiting Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park: what you will see

The park was designated in 1936 as Fuji-Hakone, among the first national parks of Japan, the Izu peninsula was added in 1955 and the Izu islands in 1964, and it covers about 1,220 square kilometres in Yamanashi, Shizuoka and Kanagawa prefectures and the Tokyo metropolis. Everything in it is volcanic. Mount Fuji, 3,776 metres, the highest mountain in Japan, is an almost perfectly symmetrical stratovolcano, built up over the last hundred thousand years on top of two older volcanoes, which last erupted in December 1707, from a vent on its south-eastern flank, covering Edo, the present Tokyo, a hundred kilometres away, in ash; it is classed as active. It was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2013, pointedly as a cultural site, a sacred place and source of artistic inspiration, the object of pilgrimage by white-robed confraternities since the Middle Ages, the subject of Hokusai's and Hiroshige's prints, with shrines at its foot and on its summit, to which women were not admitted until 1872.

At its northern foot, lava flows dammed the rivers to form the five lakes, Kawaguchi, Yamanaka, Sai, Shoji and Motosu, the last of which appears on the thousand-yen note, and an eruption in 864 laid down the lava on which grew Aokigahara, the sea of trees, a dense, mossy, strangely silent forest riddled with lava caves, some holding ice all year. Hakone is a caldera of about eleven kilometres across, formed by collapses some 180,000 and 50,000 years ago, in which younger cones rose; an explosion about three thousand years ago blew out the side of Mount Kami, creating Owakudani, the great boiling valley, and dammed a river to form Lake Ashi. In the Edo period the Tokaido, the highway between Edo and Kyoto, crossed the Hakone pass, where a checkpoint, now reconstructed, searched travellers for guns going in and women going out; stretches of the old stone-paved road survive under the cedars. Izu's peninsula is a former volcanic island that collided with Honshu, a UNESCO global geopark, with the Jogasaki lava coast, the Kawazu waterfalls and cherry trees that bloom in February.

Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open all year, but Mount Fuji is open for climbing only from early July to 10 September, the Yoshida trail from 1 July, when the huts operate and the trails are free of snow; outside that season the mountain is closed and dangerous. Fuji is shy: it is hidden in cloud or haze on most summer days and clearest in the cold, dry months from November to February, and at any season in the early morning, so that winter is the best time for the views from Hakone and the lakes.

Cherry blossom arrives in early to mid-April, with a moss phlox festival near Lake Motosu in late April and May, and the autumn colours in early to mid-November. Weekends and holidays, Golden Week above all, bring severe crowding and traffic. Allow a day for Hakone or the lakes, two for both. Tokyo is an hour and a half away, Kamakura an hour from Hakone, and Kyoto two hours by bullet train from Odawara or Mishima.