Hakone Photoshoot Guide: the torii on Lake Ashi and Fuji on a clear morning

The torii in the lake, and the line in front of it

The gate is the Heiwa no Torii, the torii of peace, and it is a modern addition to a shrine that has stood in these cedars far longer. It sits in the water at Moto-Hakone, at the southern end of the lake, with a short wooden deck beside it where everyone stands. The shore faces roughly northwest, so early sun comes over your shoulder and lights the front of the gate while the lake is still flat; the same frame in late afternoon is backlit and dull.

Arrive before eight and the wait is a few minutes. Arrive at eleven on a Saturday in November and the line runs back along the path. Shrine staff manage it, each group gets a short turn on the deck, and how long that turn is — and where a camera may go — is the shrine's decision. The arrangement has changed more than once and can change again, so check the shrine's current rules before you plan a session around the spot. An arranged shoot on shrine ground is a separate question from a visitor taking pictures, and the answer belongs to the shrine.

Two frames most people miss. The first is the approach to the shrine itself: a stone staircase climbing through cedars with stone lanterns down both sides, dim, green and nearly empty while the line at the gate is an hour long, and better in flat light than in sun. Walk up the side of the path rather than down the middle; the centre is for the deity, not for the photograph. The second is the gate from further along the lakeside path, small in a wide frame with the water and the far hills — the version that survives a crowded deck.

Whether the mountain turns up

From Moto-Hakone, Fuji sits beyond the northern end of the lake, so the frame that has both gate and mountain in it needs that particular distance to be clear. A bright morning on the shore means nothing if the north end is under cloud. The pattern is consistent enough to plan against: cold, dry mornings from November to February give the best chance, the mountain is most often out in the first hours after sunrise, and cloud builds around it as the valley warms through the day. From June the air thickens, and July and August can hide Fuji for a fortnight at a time.

The honest advice is to book the session for the gate, the cedars and the lake, and to let the mountain either appear or not. If Fuji is the whole reason for the trip, the lakes on its northern side give a bigger, closer version of it — that is Lake Kawaguchi — while Hakone gives you the gate, which they do not.

The cedar avenue and the park nobody visits

Between Moto-Hakone and Hakone-machi, a five-hundred-metre stretch of the old Tokaido highway runs under cedars planted some four hundred years ago to shelter travellers walking between Edo and Kyoto. Several hundred trees make a tunnel that direct sun never reaches the floor of, which makes it one of the few places here that works at midday and in rain. It is flat, a few minutes from the shrine, and usually quiet.

At the end of it, Onshi Hakone Park occupies a wooded peninsula pushing into the lake — the grounds of a former imperial villa, open and free, and badly under-visited: lawns, gravel paths and a terrace looking back up the water. On the morning the queue at the gate is impossible, this is where the session goes instead. The reconstructed checkpoint buildings at Hakone-machi are ticketed and keep their own seasonal hours.

Up the caldera: the Tozan railway, Gora and the ropeway

The small red trains of the Hakone Tozan line climb from Hakone-Yumoto to Gora in about forty minutes, reversing at three switchbacks where driver and guard change ends while you sit still. From the middle of June hydrangeas line the track, starting near the bottom and finishing weeks later up near Sounzan as the bloom climbs with the altitude; there are evening illuminations and reserved evening services in that window which go early — check the dates and how tickets are sold rather than assuming.

Above Gora a funicular runs up to Sounzan, and the ropeway crosses the sulphur field at Owakudani, steam coming out of yellow ground with Fuji behind it on a clear day. Treat this as the least reliable part of any plan. The ropeway stops for strong wind and for volcanic gas, sections close for inspection in the winter months, and a rise in the volcanic alert level restricts the area. Check the operator's status on the morning; a substitute bus usually runs when a section is down. Do not make the ropeway the one frame a session depends on.

Gora, the sculpture museum and the wet-weather plan

The Hakone Open-Air Museum, at Chokoku-no-Mori on the Tozan line, sets sculpture on open lawns with mountains behind and has a stained-glass tower with a spiral stair inside it — a strong graphic backdrop in the flattest weather. Personal photography is ordinary there; a session with a booked photographer is a different thing, and museums and private gardens decide that for themselves. Ask in writing before the day.

Rain is not the disaster here that it is elsewhere: wet cedar is darker and better, and mist on the lake removes the far shore for you. Keep the ropeway for the clear day and shoot the low ground on the wet one.

Ryokan gardens, private onsen and what may be photographed

A ryokan night is why Hakone suits a honeymoon: you are at the lake before the day buses arrive and still there after they leave. It comes with rules worth knowing before anyone unpacks a camera. Public baths are never photographed, full stop. A private open-air bath attached to a room is the one place where a bathing frame is even a question, and the answer belongs to the house — ask when you book. Gardens, corridors and lobbies usually need a word at the front desk first; most houses say yes when asked in advance and no when surprised. Tattoo policies differ from house to house, some accept cover patches and some do not, and that is also a booking-time question rather than an arrival-time one.

The yukata a ryokan provides photographs well indoors and on a garden veranda. It is worn left over right, as any kimono is, and it is not a costume.

What each season changes

Autumn colour reaches lake level in the second half of November, and the higher ground above Gora and Sounzan turns a couple of weeks earlier — if you have missed it below, go up. Winter is the season for the gate: the clearest Fuji mornings of the year, the quietest lake, and a cold at dawn on the water that nobody looks relaxed in for two hours, so plan a shorter session and somewhere warm at the end of it. Blossom arrives later here than in Tokyo, usually into April, and Golden Week at the end of that month is the worst week of the year to attempt Hakone: this is Tokyo's weekend valley and the whole city comes. Any weekday beats any weekend.

Planning a Hakone photoshoot

Start at the gate, early, and let the rest follow. Sixty minutes covers the torii and the shore if you are there before the line forms. Two hours adds the shrine staircase and the cedar avenue, or the park and the lakeside path, with a short walk between them. Do not try to combine the lake and the ropeway in one session — they are separated by a bus ride over the caldera rim, and one of them may be shut that day.

Hakone is about ninety minutes from Shinjuku on the Odakyu Romancecar to Hakone-Yumoto, then the mountain railway or a bus onwards. Whether a regional pass earns its keep depends on how much of the loop you use, so do that arithmetic for your own route. The first train out of Tokyo does not reach Moto-Hakone before the queue does, which is the practical argument for staying the night.

A photographer who works here regularly knows which morning the lake goes flat, which end of the deck the staff will let you use, and where the session goes when the ropeway is down — that knowledge is most of what you are booking. The destination page for Hakone covers the rest of the area, honeymoon sessions explain what a session usually includes, and you can book a photographer online.