Mt Fuji tour: 18 day trips compared

Mount Fuji is big enough to be seen from a great many places and close enough to Tokyo to be reached and left again between breakfast and bedtime. Those two facts are the whole business of this coast of Honshu. Every Mt Fuji tour on this page is an answer to the same question — where do you want to be standing when you look at the mountain?

The fifth station. The road up the mountain ends at a cluster of shops and viewing terraces partway to the summit, and that is as high as a coach goes. $127 and $152 both name it, and $92 spends twelve hours on the fifth station, Gotemba and Hakone together. A Mt Fuji tour that goes up is a Mt Fuji tour that puts you on the mountain rather than in front of it.

The Hakone side. The other shape stays low and looks across. $55 names Hakone Shrine, Lake Ashi, Lake Yamanaka and the volcanic ground at Owakudani, and finishes with a panoramic cable car. This is the version most people picture: the lake, the red gate in the water, and the mountain behind it when the air is clear.

The north side. $50 calls itself one day and two iconic sides of the mountain: the pagoda at Arakurayama and the spring-fed ponds of Oshino Hakkai in the morning, then Lake Ashi, the ropeway and Owakudani in the afternoon. $307 works the same northern ground privately, with Chureito Pagoda and Lake Kawaguchi.

How you get back. Three listings put a Shinkansen in the fare so the return leg is a train rather than an evening on the expressway — $109, $115 and $152. It is the single line that most often explains why two otherwise similar fares are eighty dollars apart.

Five numbers decide it: the fare, the hours, where the day starts, what is included and how many people have rated it. Here is the site read out plainly.

If you are leaving from the city, book $55. It is the lowest fare of anything that collects you in Tokyo, and it is the most tested listing here by a wide margin: 8,054 ratings at 4.6. Ten hours, Hakone Shrine, Lake Ashi, Lake Yamanaka, the volcanic ground at Owakudani and a panoramic cable car. For a first Mount Fuji tour this is the one that needs no argument.

If you want the mountain and a civilised way home, book $152. It is our pick for one reason: 5,333 people have rated it, and it is the most booked way to see the fifth station and Hakone in the same day. Ten hours, a guided visit to the mountain, a cruise on Lake Ashi, lunch at the foot of Mount Fuji and the bullet train back into Tokyo.

If the rating matters most, book $50. At 4.9 across 1,049 reviews it holds the best score of any listing here with more than a thousand ratings, and it is the lowest fare on the site for a full day: Hakone Shrine, the pirate ship on Lake Ashi, the ropeway, Owakudani and Yamanakako Swan Beach. It starts on the Fuji side rather than in Tokyo, which is the trade.

If you came for the pagoda photograph, book $50. One day, two sides of the mountain: Arakurayama Park and Oshino Hakkai in the north, then the Lake Ashi cruise, the ropeway and Owakudani in the south. 4.8 across 549 reviews, at the lowest fare on this list.

If there are four or five of you, book a car. $309 is the most reviewed private day here, 773 ratings at 4.8, with an English-speaking driver and an itinerary you write yourself. $476 names Yamanakako, Owakudani, Lake Ashi, Hakone Shrine and the Gotemba outlets with the fifth station as an option. Divided between a family, a private mount Fuji tour from Tokyo stops looking extravagant somewhere around four passengers.

If you want a guide, not just a driver, book $667. Eleven hours, pickup included, lakes, shrines and mountain viewpoints, 4.9 across 83 reviews. It is the highest fare on the site and the only one that puts a guide beside you all day.

People arrive at this page having typed a dozen different things, and they all mean roughly one of four days. A mount Fuji tour from Tokyo and a mt Fuji tour from Tokyo return the same coaches. So does a search for a mt Fuji day tour, a mount Fuji day tour or simply a mt Fuji trip.

The same is true across languages and spellings. A Fuji san tour uses the name the mountain has in Japan. A monte Fuji tour is how the search arrives from Italy and Spain. A mount Fuji trip, a Fuji day trip and a mount Fuji day trip from Tokyo all land on the eighteen listings in the table above.

Two searches deserve a straight answer rather than a shrug. A day trip to mt Fuji from Tokyo, or a Tokyo to mt Fuji day trip, means a bus that leaves the city in the morning and returns at night — twelve of the eighteen listings here start in Tokyo, and the rest start closer to the mountain, at Fujinomiya, Fujiyoshida or Hakone. Check the departure point before you check the fare; it is the line that catches people out.

And one search belongs to a different place entirely. A Kamakura day tour is the old coastal capital an hour south of Tokyo, not the mountain; the nearest thing on this site is $50, which spends its morning in Hakone and its afternoon on the Enoshima coast.