Lake Shoji and the Fuji lava caves (July 2026)

July 12th, 2026. I went on a bike touring with a friend around the Fuji Five Lakes area. We had lunch by Lake Shoji and then visited a few of the lava caves in the Aokigahara forest.

We met early in the morning at the Ishikawa Parking Area and rode to the Hachifuji Cafe, which overlooks Lake Shoji. We had lunch there and talked with the owners for a while. The place has a great retro feel, somewhere in the second half of the 20th century, and the owner is clearly into cars and bikes: there are motorsports signs and old parts on the walls, some vintage bikes and cars parked around, and even a few retro bikes for sale in one corner.

That day there was a canoe competition on Lake Shoji, so we went to watch for a bit. The lake is small, which apparently makes it a good size for the sport, and the views from there with Mount Fuji behind are fantastic.

Lake Shoji is one of the Fuji Five Lakes. It, along with Lakes Sai and Motosu, formed around 1,160 years ago, when a major eruption of Mount Fuji sent an enormous layer of lava over what used to be a single larger lake, splitting it into the three we see today. That same lava is what the Aokigahara forest grew on, and it's full of natural caves called lava tubes.

In the afternoon we visited three of them: the Fugaku Wind Cave (freezing cold, once used as a natural refrigerator for silkworm eggs and seeds), the Narusawa Ice Cave (where ice forms all year round), and the Lake Sai Bat Cave (longer and deeper, and home to colonies of bats). These are the rest of the photos from the day.