Sit in the right place on the Shinkansen (bullet train) en-route to Osaka or Kyoto from Tokyo (or vice versa) and the majestic Mount Fuji can be seen as you whizz by at 300+ kilometres per hour. Sadly, it’s not a view I’ve seen too often as I’ve either been on the wrong side of the train, pre-occupied, asleep or not actually on the Shinkansen as I have more often than not used cheaper, alternative transportation.

That view from on board the Shinkansen is great but it’s a lot better if you actually get the train in the shot so at the start of this year (January 2nd to be exact!) I headed off to try and see if I could capture something similar to the classic image which appears on so many marketing campaigns for Japan. Check out the short video later in this post where I managed to capture the trains going in opposite directions within seconds of each other.

Having spent the New Years holiday with my wife at her parents place in Izu I was already in Shizuoka Prefecture so it wasn’t such a long journey to this place. I made a very early start though and was already at my destination of Fujikawa Station on the Tokaido Line (JR Central) just after 8:30am! From there it was about a 15-20 minute south-east walk to the Fuji City Fuji Riverbed Rest Square area.

Fuji-San was in sight very early on and with a clear blue sky it promised much but sadly the peak of the 3,776 metre high mountain was not at its snow-peaked best.

It was indeed white but was a more faint ice-like version of the snow-capped image so prevalent in all the iconic media images of it.

The trains pass through in both directions every few minutes so there really is not so much waiting time but after about 40 minutes of watching multiple bullet trains whizz by I had seen enough and had shot way more photos than can be seen in this post! Passing under the rail-bridge on the way back to the station gave me the chance of just a real close-up Shinkansen shot which for this amateur was more interesting than I expected!

Though I was fairly satisfied with the views I’d seen, when I got back to Fujikawa Station (below) I rode the train eastwards for just ten kilometres (eight minutes) to Yoshiwara Station.

One of the exits at Fujikawa Station

The view from outside the station was pretty good but I still decided to take the 25 minute walk in a north-east direction to see more high-speed trains pass by.

The view from outside Yoshiwara Station

Seeing the mountain reflect in the Numa River en-route to the spot was fairly impressive in itself.

Whereas the first viewing point was slightly obscured by the rail-bridge, this one was a chance to see the Shinkansen in all its glory. It’s just a shame about the peak not being as snowy as I’d have liked!

For the record, both of the spots in this post are on Google Maps. Type something like “Shinkansen Photo Spot” into the search and they should appear. I now have to decide whether I will reappear at either or both of these spots to try and better what can be seen in this post.

How many attempts did it take to get this shot?!

Click here to read ‘Miho No Matsubara – One Of The Best Views Of Mount Fuji’

Click here to read ‘Day Trip To Mount Fuji 5th Station’

Click here to read ‘Mini Mount Fuji In Fukushima’

Click here to read ‘Climbing Mount Fuji’