Mount Fuji Two Sides Day Tour: Chureito Pagoda, Oshino Hakkai and Owakudani in Hakone

Mount Fuji looks like a different mountain depending on where you stand, and this ten-hour day is built around that fact. From the north, in Yamanashi, the 3,776-metre cone rises cleanly above the town of Fujiyoshida with almost nothing in front of it. From the south, inside the Hakone caldera, you rarely see the whole mountain at once; instead you get it in pieces, framed between ridgelines and steam vents. Doing both in one day is a long ride, but it is the quickest way to understand why this volcano has anchored Japanese painting and pilgrimage for centuries.

On the Hakone side the itinerary works through the classic caldera circuit. Lake Ashi fills the collapsed floor of the volcano and is crossed by sightseeing boats dressed as galleons, an odd touch that dates back to the tourism boom of the 1960s and has stuck ever since. The Hakone Ropeway then lifts you over the rim, and the ground below turns grey, yellow and bare as you approach Owakudani, the sulphur field left over from an eruption roughly three thousand years ago. Steam comes out of the hillside continuously here, and the local speciality is a hen's egg boiled in the spring water until the shell turns black.

The north side is quieter and more devotional. Oshino Hakkai is a cluster of eight ponds fed by snowmelt that has spent decades filtering down through Fuji's porous lava, which is why the water is startlingly clear and cold even in August. Village houses with thatched roofs stand around the ponds, and the whole site is small enough to walk in well under an hour.

The last stop is the one most travellers came for. Arakurayama Sengen Park sits on a slope above Fujiyoshida, reached by roughly four hundred steps from the Arakura Fuji Sengen Shrine at its base. At the top stands Chureito Pagoda, a five-storey peace memorial completed in 1963, and from the viewing terrace beside it you get the composition that appears on half the posters ever printed about Japan: pagoda in the foreground, town below, Fuji filling the sky behind. In April the cherry trees on the slope flower; in autumn the maples take over.

This is a coach day and it is honest about the driving. Expect several hours on the road across the day, an early start, and stops that are timed rather than open-ended. What you get in return is a route that would take two separate days and several train changes to assemble on your own, with someone else handling the ropeway queues, the boat timings and the parking.