Shizuoka

The main bullet-train line runs the entire length of this prefecture, which sounds like an advantage and is a booking trap. The fastest category of service does not stop anywhere in it. Travellers who buy the default fastest option between the two big cities pass through the whole prefecture at speed and have to backtrack, and rail passes that exclude that category make the mistake in the opposite direction.

The fix is simply to select one of the two slower categories, which still cover the same ground quickly — the prefectural capital is around an hour from the eastern metropolis on them. Check this before booking rather than at the platform. It is also worth knowing when planning the shape of a trip: because the stopping services are frequent, this is one of the easiest prefectures in the country to break a long journey in for half a day rather than treating it as a destination in itself.

Three days, split by geography, because Shizuoka is long and thin along the Pacific and its three parts do not talk to each other. The Izu peninsula in the east is hot springs and coast and takes two days on its own. The central belt around Shizuoka City is tea country and the Fuji view from the south, one day. The western end around Hamamatsu is a lake, an instrument industry and eel, and is closer to Nagoya than to Izu.

Distances are deceptive because the shinkansen runs the length of the prefecture: Tokyo to Atami is under an hour, Atami to Shizuoka City about forty minutes, Shizuoka to Hamamatsu another forty. But Izu itself has no fast line — going from Atami down to Shimoda at the tip is around two and a half hours on a local service.

A workable three days: two on Izu, one in the tea country on the way back.

The Tokaido Shinkansen runs the length of the prefecture — Tokyo to Shizuoka in about an hour, to Hamamatsu in an hour and a half — but note that the fastest Nozomi services do not stop here, so use Hikari or Kodama. Mt. Fuji Shizuoka Airport sits between Shizuoka and Hamamatsu. The Izu peninsula is served down its east coast by the Izukyu line from Atami to Shimoda, with limited express trains from Tokyo; the west coast of Izu has no railway at all and needs a bus or car. Tea plateau villages and the Fuji viewpoints similarly reward driving. Ferries cross Suruga Bay between Shimizu and Toi.

The bay in the middle of this coast reaches depths of well over two thousand metres, which is exceptional for a bay rather than an open sea, and it is close inshore. That single fact accounts for much of what is worth eating here: deep-water tuna landed at the local port, and a tiny pink shrimp that is netted commercially nowhere else in the country and is eaten raw in season or dried in vast pink sheets on racks along the shore.

The drying racks are a genuine sight in themselves for a few weeks of the year and are visible from the train. If you are passing through, break the journey at one of the fishing towns for lunch rather than eating in the city; the bowls are better and cheaper within sight of the boats. The same depth is why the mountain behind appears to rise straight out of the sea in winter photographs — there is very little shelf in between.

Summer weekends on Izu, when the peninsula is Tokyo's beach and the single road down each coast becomes the constraint. Also late summer into autumn on the exposed Pacific side, where typhoons close coastal roads and cancel ferries to the offshore islands.

For the Fuji view, the same rule applies as in Yamanashi: clear winter mornings, not summer afternoons. The tea terraces are at their best in the picking season from late April into May, which is also when the hills are greenest. The dead period is midwinter on the coast, when the beaches are shut and the hot-spring towns are pleasant but quiet.

The shinkansen makes the coastal corridor trivial and Izu makes a car worth having. The peninsula's single railway runs down the eastern side only, stopping at Shimoda; the west coast, with the better Fuji views across the bay, is buses and a winding road. If your trip is Izu, hire something.

For the tea hills behind Shizuoka City, a car also helps — the terraced plantations are on slopes above the town rather than beside a station. Everything else, including Hamamatsu and the coastal cities, is straightforward by rail. Note that the road down the Izu west coast is narrow and slow, so plan by time rather than by the distance on the map.

This is one of the mildest climates in Japan: coastal January highs near 12°C, frost rare, and Izu's flowers open in February. Fuji is most reliably visible from November to February, when the air is dry and the snowcap is on. The first tea flush is picked from late April into May. Sakura-ebi have two short seasons, roughly spring and autumn, and are landed only in Suruga Bay. Summer is warm and humid rather than extreme, with sea breezes, and the beaches on the Izu east coast open in July. Typhoons can hit this coast in September.

Green tea is the prefecture's crop and the difference between a supermarket sencha and one bought at a Kakegawa or Kawane grower is not subtle; many farms pour tastings. Sakura-ebi, tiny pink shrimp, are landed only in Suruga Bay and eaten raw in season or dried on racks along the Yui shore. Hamamatsu grills unagi over charcoal and has done since eel farming began on Lake Hamana. Shizuoka oden is simmered in dark beef-stock broth, skewered, and dusted with dried fish powder — sold in sweet shops as an after-school snack.

A first visit should be Izu with a car and two nights: hot springs on the east coast, the wasabi terraces in the interior valleys, and the west coast in the late afternoon when Fuji sits across the bay in silhouette. It is under an hour from Tokyo to the top of the peninsula, which makes it one of the most accessible genuinely rural landscapes in the country.

Come back for the tea. The terraced hills behind Shizuoka City produce a large share of Japan's crop and you can visit the plantations, drink at the source, and understand a landscape that most visitors see only from a shinkansen window at 280 km/h. Pair it with the Fuji view from the south, which is the less photographed and arguably better angle.