Beautiful Places in Japan: 9 Landscapes Worth the Trip

At four in the morning on the Yoshida trail, the line of head torches above you looks like a runway climbing into the dark. Two hours later the sun comes up over the Pacific from 3,776 meters, and several thousand people who have not slept all night stop talking at once.

Japan packs that kind of scenery into a country the size of California, and it is mostly accessible by train. This guide covers the places worth building a trip around, what each one now costs, and the practical details that have changed recently, because several of these have new fees and rules.

Mount Fuji, 3,776 meters, seen from the Fuji Five Lakes

Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji is a near-perfect stratovolcano, the highest point in Japan at 3,776 meters, and visible from Tokyo on clear winter mornings. It is also a mountain with a booking system now, which is the single biggest change for anyone planning to climb it.

Climbing it

The season runs from July 1 to September 10. The Yoshida trail on the Yamanashi side and the Subashiri trail open on July 1; Fujinomiya, Gotemba and the crater-rim circuit open on July 10. Everything closes on September 10.

A climbing fee of ¥4,000 per person now applies on all four trails, both the Yamanashi and Shizuoka sides, and you must register in advance through the official reservation system. Entry to the trails is blocked between 14:00 and 03:00 unless you hold a mountain hut booking, and the Yoshida trail caps entries at 4,000 climbers a day.

The rules exist because of the bullet climb: people arriving at the fifth station in the evening, going straight up overnight without acclimatizing, and getting into trouble at altitude. Book a hut, sleep for a few hours, and climb the last stretch before dawn. For other mountains, our guide to Japan's best hiking trails covers routes that need no permit at all.

Mount Fuji, Kamakura, Lake Ashi & Oshino Hakkai

Seeing it without climbing

The Fuji Five Lakes give you the classic reflection, with Lake Kawaguchi the easiest to reach and Lake Motosu the one printed on the ¥1,000 note. Chureito Pagoda near Shimoyoshida is the shot with the five-storied pagoda and the mountain behind it, best in April with the cherry blossom or in mid-November with the maples.

Hakone, inside Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, offers the view across Lake Ashi with the Hakone Shrine torii in the water, plus the sulfur vents of Owakudani. It is the easiest Fuji day trip from Tokyo, and unlike the summit it needs no permit, no fee and no overnight walk.

If you would rather be led than plan it, there are guided options for outdoor enthusiasts covering both the lakes and Hakone.

Fuji is shy. It is hidden by cloud on most summer days and clearest between November and February, early in the morning.

Miyajima

The great torii of Itsukushima Shrine, back in full view since the end of 2022

Miyajima, formally Itsukushima, sits in the Seto Inland Sea 45 minutes from Hiroshima and is counted as one of the Three Views of Japan, alongside Matsushima in Miyagi and Amanohashidate in Kyoto.

The ferry from Miyajimaguchi takes about 10 minutes and costs ¥200 each way. Since October 2023 there is also a visitor tax of ¥100 per person, collected with the fare on the way over, or ¥500 a year if you pay it as a lump sum. Residents, commuters, preschool children and school groups are exempt.

The shrine and the torii

Itsukushima Shrine was founded in 593 and rebuilt in its present form in 1168 by Taira no Kiyomori. It enshrines three goddesses, daughters of Susanoo, revered as protectors of seafarers, and the whole complex is built over the water on piles so that the tide runs beneath the floorboards.

The great torii stands 200 meters offshore. It was under scaffolding from 2019 until December 2022 and has been fully visible since. Admission to the shrine is ¥300 for adults, ¥200 for high school students and ¥100 for younger children, and it opens at 6:30 every day of the year.

One current caveat: the shrine's East Corridor is under structural reinforcement through December 2026, and the Five-Storied Pagoda is being restored until November 2027. Neither closes the site, but both put scaffolding in some photographs.

At high tide the torii stands in water and you photograph it from the shore. At low tide you can walk out to its base. Both are worth seeing, and tide tables are published on the shrine's site, so check before you book a day trip.

Mount Misen and the deer

Mount Misen, 535 meters, with the islands of the Seto Inland Sea below

Mount Misen is the island's high point at 535 meters. The ropeway from Momijidani Park costs ¥2,000 round trip and runs from 9:00 to 16:00, and it drops you about an hour's walk short of the actual summit. Walking the whole way up the Momijidani route takes 1.5 to 2 hours, and the Daisho-in and Omoto routes are the alternatives.

Sika deer wander the town and the ferry terminal, and they are entirely unbothered by people. They will take a map, a ticket or a paper bag straight out of your hand, so keep documents in a zipped bag. Feeding them is discouraged.

Momijidani Park is named for its maples, and late November is when the island is at its best.

Nikko

Nikko National Park covers 1,149 square kilometers across three prefectures

Nikko is two hours north of Tokyo and manages to be both a mountain national park and one of the country's most elaborate religious sites.

The distinction matters, because the two are often conflated. Nikko National Park was designated in 1934 and covers 114,908 hectares, about 1,149 square kilometers, across Tochigi, Gunma and Fukushima. Separately, the Shrines and Temples of Nikko are inscribed on the World Heritage list. The park itself holds no World Heritage designation.

Toshogu, the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, is the reason most people come: gold leaf, lacquer and carving applied without restraint, including the three wise monkeys and the sleeping cat. Rinno-ji and Futarasan Shrine sit alongside it, and our guide to Japan's temples and shrines puts them in context.

Beyond the shrines, the park runs up to Lake Chuzenji at 1,269 meters, formed when Mount Nantai erupted and dammed the valley. Kegon Falls drops 97 meters out of the lake, and an elevator takes you to a viewing platform at its base. The Irohazaka switchback road between the town and the lake is one of the most crowded foliage drives in Japan in the second half of October.

Senjogahara marsh, above the lake, has a boardwalk trail of about 6 kilometers that stays open through summer, when it is noticeably cooler than Tokyo.

Yakushima

Yakushima's cedar forest, a World Heritage site since December 1993

Yakushima Island lies 60 km south of Kyushu and gets rain almost continuously: up to 10,000 mm a year in the interior. The result is a cedar forest so thick with moss that it reads as a single green surface, and it is the landscape that shaped the forest scenes in Princess Mononoke.

It became one of Japan's first two natural World Heritage sites on December 11, 1993, along with Shirakami-Sanchi, and the inscribed area covers 10,747 hectares, roughly a fifth of the island.

The cedars

Yakushima's forests are best known for yakusugi, cedars more than a thousand years old.

The oldest of them, Jomon Sugi, stands 25.3 meters tall with a girth of 16.4 meters at 1,300 meters altitude, and estimates of its age run from 2,170 to 7,200 years.

Reaching it is a serious day: 22 km round trip from the Arakawa trailhead, nine to ten hours of walking, about 700 meters of climbing, much of it along a disused logging railway. Private vehicles are banned on the access road from March 1 to November 30, so you take the climbing bus from the Yakusugi Museum, which costs ¥2,000 one way or ¥3,000 return including the conservation fund.

There is a conservation contribution of ¥1,000 for a day in the mountains, or ¥2,000 if you stay overnight in a hut. It is requested rather than enforced, and in practice it is bundled into the bus fare.

Shiratani Unsuikyo is the shorter, mossier alternative, with a forest fee of ¥800. It is closed at the time of writing: the access road was cut by a landslide after Typhoon No. 24 in September 2026 and the ravine has no entry until the prefecture reopens the road, so check its status before building a day around it.

Wildlife and getting there

The island has its own macaque subspecies, the yakuzaru, and a small population of sika deer, both endemic to Yakushima. Loggerhead turtles nest on Inakahama beach, part of Nagata-hama, which takes 30 to 40 percent of all loggerhead landings in Japan; nesting runs from late April to early August and hatchlings emerge from July into September.

From Kagoshima, the hydrofoil takes 1 hour 50 minutes and costs ¥14,000 one way, with a ¥25,900 round-trip discount, and fares were revised upward in April 2026. The slower ferry takes four hours for ¥6,500, and flights take 40 minutes.

Shirakami-Sanchi

Shirakami-Sanchi holds the largest untouched beech forest in East Asia

Shirakami-Sanchi straddles Aomori and Akita in northern Honshu, and it holds the largest primeval beech forest left in East Asia. The mountain range covers roughly 1,300 square kilometers; the World Heritage core, inscribed in 1993 alongside Yakushima, is about 170 of them and is almost entirely undisturbed.

Anmon Falls: three waterfalls on a trail that opens only in the warm months

This is not a drive-through park. Most of the protected core requires a permit and a guide, and the accessible sections are concentrated at the edges. The Anmon Falls trail, a chain of three waterfalls, is the main day walk, open roughly from June to early November and closed by snow the rest of the year. Juniko, a set of twelve lakes on the Sea of Japan side, includes Aoike, a pond whose blue is strong enough to look artificial.

Come in October for the beech turning gold, and expect Tohoku weather: wet, changeable, and much colder than Tokyo.

Kamikochi

Kappa Bridge at Kamikochi, with the Hotaka range behind

Kamikochi is a highland valley at 1,500 meters in the Northern Japan Alps, inside Chubu Sangaku National Park. The Azusa River runs through it, clear enough to see the stones on the bottom, with the Hotaka peaks and the active volcano Yakedake standing over it.

The season runs from mid-April to mid-November: in 2026 the road opened on April 17 and closes on November 15, after which the valley is shut until spring. There is no entry fee.

Private cars have been banned since 1996 and cannot pass the Kama Tunnel at any time of year. You park at Sawando on the Nagano side, ¥800 a day, and take the shuttle for ¥1,600 one way or ¥3,000 return, or at Akandana on the Gifu side, ¥600, with a ¥1,500 shuttle. There is also a direct bus from Matsumoto for ¥4,600.

Kappa Bridge is the postcard, and it is busy. Walk 45 minutes upstream to Myojin Pond or an hour downstream to Taisho Pond, where dead trees still stand in the water from the 1915 eruption that created it, and the crowds thin out. Serious hikers use Kamikochi as the trailhead for Yari and Hotaka.

Oirase Gorge

Oirase Stream is the only outlet from Lake Towada, in Aomori, and a path follows it for about 14 kilometers from Nenokuchi down to Yakeyama, staying beside the water the whole way. Choshi Otaki is the largest of its waterfalls.

It is flat, well maintained and walkable in sections, with a JR bus running the road alongside so you can join or leave wherever you like. The foliage peaks in the second half of October, about two weeks before Nikko, and the gorge is closed to through traffic in winter.

Cherry blossom

Bloom timing moves north through spring, from late March in Tokyo to May in Hokkaido

Hanami is not a metaphor for anything. People book a patch of ground under the trees, sit on a blue tarpaulin and eat and drink for several hours, and the forecast is tracked on the evening news.

Timing runs north with the season. Tokyo and Kyoto peak from late March into the first days of April; Hirosaki in Aomori, whose castle park holds thousands of trees, comes in late April and early May; Hokkaido finishes the sequence in May. The bloom lasts about a week once it starts, and rain or wind can cut it to three days.

Ueno Park in Tokyo is the loudest and most crowded of the famous spots, with around a thousand trees along its central avenue.

The Philosopher's Path in Kyoto follows a canal for two kilometers under a continuous canopy. Himeji Castle sets its white keep behind the blossom, and Yoshino in Nara puts tens of thousands of trees on a hillside in bands that bloom at different heights.

Book accommodation months out. This is the most expensive week of the Japanese year to travel.

Sacred mountains

The Kumano Kodo: 307 kilometers of pilgrimage routes through the Kii mountains

The Kumano Kodo is a network of pilgrimage routes through the Kii Peninsula, part of the World Heritage property called Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range. The property links three sacred sites, Yoshino and Omine, Kumano Sanzan and Koyasan, with 307 kilometers of routes between them.

The Nakahechi route from Tanabe to the Kumano Sanzan shrines is the one most walkers take, typically over four or five days, staying in family-run minshuku. The trail is stone-paved in places, steep in others, and passes through cedar plantation and cypress forest most of the way.

Mount Koya is the other reason to come. Kukai founded the monastic complex here in the early ninth century, and dozens of its temples still take overnight guests, serving vegetarian shojin ryori and inviting you to the morning service. Okunoin, the cemetery that leads to Kukai's mausoleum, runs for two kilometers under cedars with more than 200,000 graves along it, and walking it after dark is the strongest thing on offer in Japanese Buddhism.

Several of our cultural tours include a temple stay, if you want the lodging arranged for you.

Further north, Mount Haguro in Yamagata is one of the three Dewa Sanzan mountains, reached by 2,446 stone steps through a cedar avenue. And Ise Jingu in Mie, the most important shrine in Shinto, charges nothing to enter and rebuilds its main sanctuaries from scratch every twenty years, next in 2033.

Planning a nature trip

Japan has 35 national parks, and the best of them are reachable on public transport, which is unusual anywhere. The constraint is seasonal: Fuji is climbable for ten weeks, Kamikochi is closed for five months, and the Shirakami trails are under snow for half the year.

Build a trip around one season rather than trying to catch several. Late October and early November get you foliage from Nikko to Kyoto with clear Fuji views. Late April gets you blossom in Tohoku when the Kanto trees have finished. Our guide to autumn in Japan covers the foliage calendar region by region.

If you would rather not assemble the logistics, the rural Japan route takes thirteen days through the country away from the Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka corridor, which is where most of this scenery actually is.