Fujikawaguchiko

The land here is young. Mount Fuji's eruptions built the plateau, and the lava flows of the Jogan eruption of 864 to 868 split a larger lake into the present Lake Sai, Lake Shoji and Lake Motosu and spread the ground on which the Aokigahara forest later grew. The Kawaguchi Asama Shrine at the lake was founded in the wake of that eruption to calm the mountain, and shrines of the same family ring the whole volcano.

For centuries the settlements were small farming and forestry villages on poor volcanic soil, made busier in the Edo period by the Fuji-ko, confraternities of pilgrims from Edo who crossed the passes to climb the mountain in summer and lodged at pilgrims' houses on the way. Silk and weaving supported the area around Yoshida to the east, and boats carried goods across the lakes.

Modern tourism arrived with transport: the Fujikyuko railway reached Kawaguchiko in 1950, a toll road to the fifth station opened in the 1960s, and hotels, museums and camps spread along the shores through the postwar decades. The town in its present form is recent, created in 2003 by the merger of Kawaguchiko, Ashiwada and Katsuyama, and enlarged in 2006 by the addition of Kamikuishiki. The inscription of Mount Fuji as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013 — as a cultural site, for its place in religion and art — raised visitor numbers sharply, and managing them has shaped local policy ever since.

Everything here refers to the mountain. It has been an object of worship for well over a thousand years, first feared for its eruptions and later climbed as an act of devotion; the Asama shrines, the stone markers along the old trails and the pilgrim lodgings of the Fuji-ko are the physical remains of that faith, and the mountain's presence in woodblock prints, above all Hokusai's series of views, made it the national emblem it remains.

Local culture is that of a highland farming and forestry district turned resort. Village festivals at the shrines keep their processions and dances, silk weaving survives in the area as a craft, and the seasonal calendar of flower plantings, lake fireworks and maple lighting is a modern layer over it. Photography is itself a local activity: the shore fills before dawn when the forecast is clear, and residents are long used to cameras pointed over their fences.

The relationship with visitors is the current theme. Several million people a year pass through a town of some ten thousand households, and measures to control parking, litter, roadside crowds and the numbers climbing the mountain in summer have become part of daily life. Ordinary manners are those of rural Japan: greetings between neighbours, quiet evenings, and a strong sense that the landscape is lived in rather than staged.

About 26,000 people live in the town, spread among the settlements around the lakes rather than in one centre. Tourism is the economy — hotels, guesthouses, campsites, restaurants, bus and boat operators, souvenir and craft shops — and it is highly seasonal, with a long quiet stretch in late winter and early spring and a rush from the flower festivals through to the autumn colour.

Farming continues on the plateau, with vegetables suited to cool summers, and forestry and stone quarrying survive on a small scale. Many residents work in neighbouring Fujiyoshida, which has the area's hospital, shops and remnants of its textile industry, and commuting to Kofu or even Tokyo is possible if slow. Young people leaving for the cities has thinned the population, as across rural Yamanashi.

Life is shaped by altitude and weather. Winter mornings are well below freezing, snow closes the mountain roads, and water from the volcano's springs is so abundant that the town is known for the clarity of its tap water. Residents watch the mountain the way other places watch the sea — for cloud, for the first snow in autumn and the last in summer. Traffic on the lakeside roads at peak times, the price of housing pushed up by holiday accommodation and preparation for volcanic emergencies are the standing local issues.

Yamanashi's dish is hoto, and it is served across the town in heavy iron pots: broad, flat wheat noodles simmered, not boiled separately, with pumpkin, taro, mushrooms and greens in a miso broth, so that the starch thickens the soup. It was farmhouse food in a province too mountainous for much rice, and it suits the cold evenings of the plateau.

Close by, Fujiyoshida has Yoshida no udon, a distinctly hard, chewy noodle in a soy and miso broth, topped with boiled cabbage, fried tofu and sometimes horse meat, eaten with a chilli-and-sesame condiment called suridane. The lakes and spring-fed streams supply wakasagi smelt, fried whole in batter, and rainbow trout and char, grilled on skewers. Water is a speciality in its own right: the snowmelt filtered through the volcano's lava for decades is bottled commercially and used by soba makers, brewers and tofu shops.

Yamanashi is also Japan's leading wine prefecture and a large grower of grapes, peaches and plums, so local wine made from the white Koshu grape and summer fruit appear on menus and in shops, though the vineyards themselves lie north around Katsunuma. Sweets lean on the mountain in shape and name — steamed buns, bean cakes and rice crackers moulded or printed as Fuji — and roadside stalls sell grilled rice cakes, corn and chestnuts in season.