Mount Fuji and Hakone in One Private Day from Tokyo with Guide and Driver

Fuji and Hakone are usually sold as two separate day trips, and there is a reason for that — doing both properly in one day means eleven hours door to door and a start before eight in the morning. What makes it work is a private vehicle with a driver and guide, which removes the two things that eat the day on public transport: waiting for connections and backtracking. If your time in Japan is short and you want the mountain and the caldera in a single push, this is the honest way to do it.

The morning belongs to Mount Fuji, a 3,776-metre active stratovolcano that has been dormant since the Hoei eruption of 1707. The first stop is Chureito Pagoda in Arakurayama Sengen Park above Fujiyoshida, up around four hundred steps, for the view that put this stretch of Yamanashi on every itinerary. From there the road climbs the Fuji Subaru Line to the 5th Station at about 2,300 metres — the point where the Yoshida climbing route proper begins, and close enough to see the volcanic scree and the trail switchbacks above you. In winter the road is normally closed by snow and the stop is replaced.

Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine follows, its approach running through a stand of very old cedars to the torii that has opened the northern pilgrimage for centuries. It is worth knowing that Fuji's 2013 UNESCO inscription was as a cultural site — the listing recognises the mountain's hold on Japanese art, poetry and pilgrimage rather than its geology, and this shrine is where that becomes tangible. Oshino Hakkai closes the Fuji half: eight ponds fed by snowmelt that has filtered for decades through the mountain's porous lava, clear enough to see every stone on the bottom.

The afternoon crosses into the Hakone caldera, a very different landscape formed by the collapse of an older volcano. The Hakone Ropeway lifts you over Owakudani, where sulphur still vents from bare ground and eggs boiled in the springs come out with blackened shells. The day finishes with a sightseeing cruise on Lake Ashi, the caldera lake, passing the vermilion torii of Hakone Shrine standing in the water. Hakone was also the site of the Edo period's most closely watched checkpoint on the Tokaido highway, and the old stone road over the pass still runs through the cedar forest above the lake.

On pricing: this is a per-group rate, not a per-person one. One to five guests pay a single total, with higher bands for six to eight, nine to twelve, and up to twenty — so five travellers pay the same as one, and split it five ways. Included are the guide, the licensed private vehicle, fuel, tolls, parking, hotel pickup and drop-off within Tokyo's 23 wards, custom itinerary planning, and on-board Wi-Fi and bottled water subject to availability. Attraction tickets are not included, which specifically means the Hakone Ropeway and the Lake Ashi cruise, and neither are meals. Pickups outside the 23 wards are not covered.