Mount Takao

Fifty minutes from Shinjuku on the Keio line and you are at the foot of a 599-metre mountain that around three million people climb every year, which makes it the most-visited mountain on earth. The Michelin Green Guide gave it three stars in 2007 and the numbers have never come back down.

There are eight marked trails. Trail 1 is paved the whole way and takes about ninety minutes from the base; Trail 6 follows a stream and gets your boots wet; the Inariyama ridge trail is the quietest and the steepest. Or skip the first half on the cable car, which climbs at 31 degrees at its worst and is the steepest in Japan, or on the open chairlift beside it.

Halfway up is Yakuo-in, a Shingon temple founded in 744 whose mountain deity is a tengu, so bronze long-nosed tengu statues stand around the buildings. Monks still practise here. In March they hold a fire-walking festival at the foot of the mountain and members of the public are invited to cross the embers at the end.

From the summit on a clear winter day Mount Fuji sits on the horizon to the west, and around the winter solstice the sun sets directly behind it, which packs the summit with photographers.

Eat tororo soba, grated yam over buckwheat noodles, at any of the places on the way up. A beer garden operates on the mountainside in summer.

Avoid autumn weekends unless you enjoy queues; the cable car line can run an hour. Weekday mornings the trails are almost empty.