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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Tokyo
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
A 500m crater hides a surprisingly wet world: its exposed rim is wind-battered grassland, while the hollow below holds woodland, ferns, moss, wetlands and ponds—with a small shrine tucked among the trees.
At the crater’s center, the ground folds into a second, smaller pit nicknamed Koana, or “Little Hole.” This roughly 80m-wide, 60m-deep hollow shelters a grove of yamaguruma trees.
A mid-19th-century painting by Egawa Tanean preserves an island rainmaking rite: people lit a fire on Hachijo-Fuji’s summit and beat bells and drums noisily to call for rain.
For generations, boys marked coming of age by carrying smooth beach pebbles up to Asama Shrine inside the crater. Stones placed there by island kindergarteners continue the offering tradition today.
Hachijo once had a thriving dairy trade: by 1923 it had a condensed-milk company, and milk crackers became a familiar island sweet. After milk production paused in 2013, shipments resumed that December.
The municipal Fureai Farm on Hachijo-Fuji has a working job beyond its views: it raises replacement cattle and stock loaned to island farmers through a Japanese Black cattle program.
Geologists have identified deposits from at least 25 Hachijo-Fuji eruptions between about 10,000 and 4,000 years ago—evidence that the cone’s history is far longer than its written eruption records.
Hachijo-Fuji last erupted in 1605, sending ash and lava from a fissure on its southeast flank. In 2002, earthquakes and 5cm of eastward ground movement suggested magma had intruded below it.
On exceptionally clear days, visitors can glimpse the summit of mainland Mount Fuji 263km to the north—so distant that only its peak appears above the sea horizon.
The latch on the summit animal-exclusion fence protects rare native plants: feral goats could browse them, so park rangers ask hikers to close the gate behind them.
At the crater’s Asama Shrine, a yamaguruma—also called a wheel tree—is revered as a sacred tree and has been protected as a Hachijo Town natural monument since 1983.
Hachijo Island’s distinctive shape comes from 2 volcanoes joining together: lava from the younger Hachijo-Fuji filled low ground and connected its broad slopes to the older Higashiyama volcano.
