Oshino Hakkai

Snowmelt from Mount Fuji sinks into the lava on the mountain's flank and travels underground for about twenty years, filtered through layers of porous rock, before rising here in eight spring ponds. The water comes up at around twelve degrees all year and is clear enough that the bottom looks much closer than it is. Waku-ike, the largest and deepest of the eight, is around eight metres down and still reads as shallow.

A useful thing to know: the pond most people photograph, the wide one beside the water wheel and the thatched roofs, is not one of the eight. It was dug as part of a private tourist facility. The real eight are smaller and scattered around the village, several of them behind the souvenir shops, and finding all of them takes an hour of walking that most visitors never do.

Which is the honest summary of the place. The springs are a designated Natural Monument and part of the Fuji World Heritage listing, and the village around them is a coach park with a very large number of shops selling grilled corn, dango, Fuji-shaped biscuits and soft serve. On a fine weekend the main path is shoulder to shoulder by ten in the morning.

Get there before eight. The light is better, the water is still, Fuji stands behind the thatched roofs without a queue in front of it, and you can hear the springs. Spring water is available to drink from a designated tap; the ponds themselves are not for wading, coins or anything else, and the signs asking for this exist because people have done all of it.

Buses from Kawaguchiko take about thirty minutes. Parking fills early.