The Fuji Five Lakes: Kawaguchiko, Yamanakako, Saiko, Shojiko and Motosuko, and Which One You Should Actually Go To

All five lakes were formed by lava flows damming rivers on Fuji's northern flank, and they run in an arc from east to west. Yamanakako, the largest and highest of the four eastern lakes, is a resort lake of cycle paths, swan boats and campsites. Kawaguchiko is the one with a town, a station, the ropeway, the museums and most of the hotels, which makes it the base whether you like it or not. Saiko is quiet, wooded and ringed with lava caves. Shojiko is the smallest and gives the view Japanese painters used, with the cone rising over a lower ridge. Motosuko, deepest and clearest, is the view on the back of the 1,000-yen note, from its north-west shore.

Base here. The north shore promenade at Oishi park has lavender in late June and July and the classic reflection on still mornings; the Kachi Kachi ropeway climbs Mount Tenjo for the view over lake and cone; the maple corridor on the north shore is lit in November. The Kawaguchiko guide covers the town in detail, and the Chureito pagoda is ten minutes away in Fujiyoshida. Everything else on this page is a trip out from here.

Yamanakako, twenty minutes east, is the lake for a half day outdoors: a flat 14 km cycle loop with the mountain on one side, a cluster of hot-spring bathhouses (Benifuji no Yu has open-air tubs facing Fuji), and the Hana no Miyako flower park. Saiko, fifteen minutes west of Kawaguchiko, has the Iyashi no Sato open-air museum, a reconstructed thatched village on the site of one destroyed by a 1966 landslide, with craft workshops and Fuji above; and the Narusawa ice cave and Fugaku wind cave, lava tubes with year-round ice, on the road to Motosuko.

Shojiko is a ten-minute detour from the Saiko road and there is nothing there but a shore, a couple of inns and the view called Kodaki Fuji, the mountain appearing to carry a smaller peak on its flank; it is the quietest spot on the whole circuit. Motosuko is the far west end, forty minutes from Kawaguchiko, and its north-west shore is where the banknote photograph was taken; in late April and May the Fuji Shibazakura festival covers the fields at its foot with pink moss phlox and draws the biggest crowds of the year. Neither lake is served well by bus; they are the case for a car or a private tour.

Highway buses and the Fuji Excursion train reach Kawaguchiko from Shinjuku in about two hours. The lakes are then buses: the Kawaguchiko and Saiko sightseeing lines and the Fujikko-go to Yamanakako and Oshino, on two-day passes; Shojiko and Motosuko have a few services a day on the blue line. A hire car from Kawaguchiko station is the practical way to do all five in a day. Guided Five Lakes tours from Tokyo run 10 to 12 hours in a private car, USD 350 to 600 per group, and the good ones order the day by light: the west lakes early, Oshino and the pagoda mid-morning, Kawaguchiko last. The Hakone or Kawaguchiko page decides the base.