Luxury Hakone & Mount Fuji Vacations

Hakone lies in the mountains southwest of Tokyo, inside Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, with its villages spread across the caldera of an ancient volcano. The same volcanic activity heats the springs that feed its ryokan baths and still sends steam through the vents at Owakudani. Gora and Miyanoshita sit on the eastern slopes along the mountain railway, Sengokuhara spreads across the valley floor to the north, and Lake Ashi fills the western side of the caldera, with Mount Fuji visible beyond it on clear days. Further north, the Fuji Five Lakes sit at the foot of the mountain, where the views are closest.

A good stay here is an unhurried one. Two or three nights leave time for a long soak before dinner each evening and a full day around the Fuji Five Lakes, without moving through the region on a timetable. Most places to stay here are ryokan, from Gora Kadan on the grounds of a former imperial villa, to small inns with only a handful of rooms, and the area sits naturally between Tokyo and Kyoto on a longer journey through Japan.

The Hakone loop is the classic introduction to the area, linking a mountain railway, a cable car, a ropeway, and a boat in a single day. The Hakone Tozan Railway zigzags up the slopes from Hakone-Yumoto to Gora, and from Sounzan the ropeway passes over Owakudani, a volcanic valley where eggs boiled in the sulfur springs turn black and are said to add seven years to your life. At Lake Ashi, boats cross toward Moto-Hakone, where the vermilion torii of Hakone Shrine stands in the water at the edge of the forest. Visited early, before the first boats arrive, the shrine is at its quietest.

The Hakone Open-Air Museum sets large sculptures across its lawns and has a pavilion devoted to Picasso, while the Pola Museum of Art in Sengokuhara holds French Impressionist paintings in a building set low among beech trees. On the Fuji side, the Chureito Pagoda frames the mountain above the town of Fujiyoshida, a view best seen at sunrise, and from July to early September a guided overnight climb can be timed to reach the summit for dawn.

Near Moto-Hakone, stretches of the original Tokaido road survive as a stone-paved path climbing through tall cedars, much as it was when feudal lords and their retinues traveled between Edo and Kyoto. Along the route, the Amazake-chaya teahouse has served amazake, a sweet drink made from fermented rice, since the Edo period, and it makes a good place to stop halfway up.

In Sengokuhara, the slopes below Mount Daigatake fill with susuki pampas grass from late September into November, turning silver and gold in the low afternoon light, with a path running through the middle of the fields.

Between Lake Kawaguchi and Lake Yamanaka, the village of Oshino has eight spring-fed ponds, known as Oshino Hakkai, filled by snowmelt from Mount Fuji that has filtered through volcanic rock for years before reaching the surface. The water is clear enough to see the stones on the bottom, and the village is at its quietest in the early morning, before the day-trip buses arrive from Tokyo.

From Tokyo, the Shinkansen reaches Odawara in around 35 to 45 minutes, and a private driver can continue up into the Hakone hills from there in under an hour. The Romancecar limited express runs directly from Shinjuku to Hakone-Yumoto in about 85 minutes, with observation seats at the front of some trains, while a private car from central Tokyo takes around 90 minutes to two hours depending on traffic. From Kyoto, Odawara is around two hours by Shinkansen, which makes Hakone a natural stop between the two cities.

American and British passport holders can enter Japan visa-free for stays of up to 90 days. Within Hakone, the mountain railway, ropeway, and lake boats connect most of the sights, though a private driver is the more comfortable way to reach the Fuji Five Lakes, about an hour away by road.