If a person would only be able to experience Japan once for a photo workshop, I would invite them on my annual Mt. Fuji Photo Tour Expedition.  For more than two decades, I have been exploring the Mt. Fuji region, and I am drawn to FujiSan – as a moth is to a flame – so I insist on introducing the iconic symbol of Japan to visiting photographers even when the project’s focus is in winter and birding or landscape photography in Hokkaido plus Snow Monkeys in Nagano.  Mt. Fuji has been worshipped over for thousands of years, even before this island nation was called Japan, beginning with the First Nations People, the Ainu. The Ainu understood Mt. Fuji’s inherent cultural and spiritual value. Mt. Fuji stands essentially unchanged for ages, representing something larger and more meaningful than the nation itself. It carries the essence of the people and the natural world. The Ainu know this and lend the appropriate revery to Japan’s iconic peak.

Fujisan became a sacred volcanic peak because the powers that be used their faith to interpret the guiding force behind the continuing volume of the lava flow. That lava flow phenomenon created the Aokigahara Forest, The Sea of Trees; it’s a phenomenal, legendary forest that spans three thousand and four hundred hectares across the Northwest base of Mt. Fuji. My recommendations always come rooted in the form of personal experience, and Mt. Fuji and its surrounding area are no different.  The Sea of Trees and Mt. Fuji are inextricably linked on my Mt. Fuji Photography Tour Workshop adventures, and each year I find something I have never seen before, part of my beginner’s mindset that allows me to approach a location I frequent with a fresh perspective.

Twenty plus years later, I am still using the same trails when I am leading a Mount Fuji Photography Workshop spanning into the prefectures of Yamanashi, Shizuoka, Kanagawa, Nagano, and on the beaten path in Tokyo when the visibility is clear to view Mt. Fuji.  For your information, and for those who are planning to visit the base of Mt. Fuji, it is not accessible to everyday visitors. Of the Five Fuji Lakes (there are actually two more plus the ocean and several mountain ranges), using mass transit, you will only have easy access to two of the Fuji Five Lakes, and time schedules restrict you. On my Mt. Fuji Photography Workshops, I never use public transportation because of how limiting it is, but some of my colleagues who run on the beaten path photo workshops use it, but even my colleagues comment on how bored they are just making money from the garden variety international tourists who don’t know better.