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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Tokyo
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This is no single crater lake: several wetlands and little ponds dot Hachijo-Fuji’s central crater cone, tucked inside the roughly 400-m-wide summit crater. It’s a small, watery world nested inside a volcano.
Instead of bare volcanic rock, the crater’s damp interior supports a mossy forest: ferns and moss cover the forest floor, and moss even clings to slender branches. Botanists describe the woodland as cloud-forest-like.
A small predator grows in Hachijo-Fuji’s damp uplands: round-leaved sundew catches insects on sticky leaf hairs. This insect-eating plant is recorded above the mountain’s middle slopes and blooms with tiny white flowers around July.
Hachijo-kogomegusa is only known from Hachijo and Mikura islands; on Hachijo, it grows on parts of Hachijo-Fuji. This 3–13 cm summit plant has white, purple-striped flowers and is listed as Vulnerable in Japan.
At the Asama Shrine inside the same crater, piles of round stones recall an island custom: boys carried offerings up for prayers at ages 7, 15 and 20. A 2019 park ranger also reported stones brought by local kindergarteners.
The crater is a Special Protection Zone of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. Its rules restrict collecting plants, capturing animals and even taking fallen leaves—a reminder that this quiet volcanic habitat is protected down to the forest floor.
