By Paul Topping

Tokyo, the largest railway station in the world, is our starting point. Our goal is the amazing Mount Fuji, the holy symbolic cone and its many lakes. We spot Fuji from the train, more visually appealing from a distance in spring, with its streaks of snow. We travel into the hills where the multitude of trees creates a patchwork green carpet with varying shades and depth.

Our hotel is chosen for its traditional Japanese style and because it faces the lake and Mount Fuji. Well, not quite.

Jezzabel is not too impressed, and this is not a cheap hotel. We have booked a lake view with the mountain behind it, as per the photos on Booking.com, and she wants to check it before signing in at reception.

The first room we inspect has a view of Mount Fuji in the distance, but mainly overlooks the back ends of numerous commercial properties of a light industrial nature. We check the next room, one with a lake view, and that’s acceptable. We quickly establish there is no room with both the mountain and lake view, as the website implies. We settle on the lake view. It’s a large timber room, but with no bed. It has what look like paper walls, although they are not. Toilets are very standard in Japan, yet you need an instruction book with each sitting. Multiple options exist once you have finished your business.

Our futon bed will be ready, we are told, and put in position while we are at dinner, for which we are given Japanese outfits to wear. The hotel room will be transformed from a low-level black lacquered table and floor-cushion sitting room by day into a bedroom by night.

I look out from the balcony and see two men in the distance splashing about in the lake. Tough local people swimming at this time of year, I think, although they do look a bit frantic. Presumably, they are well out of their depth.

From nowhere, a helicopter arrives overhead, and the hoist comes down with a member of the crew. He picks up both people from the water, and then the helicopter moves off. It’s like a James Bond film.

Then a siren goes off, and a passenger ferry heads out into the lake, followed by another twenty or so motorised boats. Twenty minutes later, they all return. Fifteen minutes after that, we step out for a walk and find all the crew from the helicopter, support ambulances, and local boat owners meeting up. It’s obviously been some sort of drill. They all pray at what looks like a shrine and bow.

Most restaurants and shops are closed, and there are not many people about. It’s the off-season.

The lake-view location is great, but the only place we can find to eat is an American-style dated diner, and the food disappoints. There are rows of giant paddle swan boats in this dead, grey town as we walk amongst the depressing architecture, much of it dating from the 1970s.

All four lakes around one side of Fuji are linked by a frequent bus service and, in season, climbing Fuji appeals to many. The cable cars operate in season too, taking visitors to certain hilltops, though I am not sure I would call them mountains. Lake Kawaguchiko is the largest of the four lakes. If we ever visit again, which is unlikely, we will stay on the opposite side of the lake to get the best view of both the lake and the mountain.

We are here for twenty-four hours, and that looks to be enough for both of us. Opposite the railway station, one restaurant stood out like a beacon when we arrived. Shaw’s Restaurant has only been open for a few months and is a modern-style sushi restaurant. A big surprise when you come from the West or Southeast Asia to Japan; you think sushi is Japan’s staple diet, but in reality, they eat lots of meat. We have even been to pork-only restaurants.

We arrive at the hotel restaurant fifteen minutes before breakfast ends and enter a very big room. Everyone is seated on cushions on the floor at low tables. Everyone is in fancy dress, that is, local attire provided in the bedroom wardrobe. Needless to say, we try a bit of everything, including beef, cabbage, sour yellow stuff and rice, but not as we know it.

The only thing I see and understand is miso soup, but not at 9.30 in the morning.

Difficult to exit quickly when your legs are spread-eagled under a two-foot-high table.

So Mount Fuji should, at best, be a quick dash from Tokyo, just to say you have done it and been up close. This applies even if you are a tourist with up to four weeks in the country. Do Fuji on a day coach trip from Tokyo.

Japan is such a large and diverse country with so many cities to visit. Mount Fuji is likely best viewed from a distance.