Who runs Port of Fuji

Port of Fuji is an independent English guide to Shimizu — Japan's Mt. Fuji cruise port — written for the passengers who walk off the gangway and want to run their own day. We are not a cruise line, not a coach-tour company, and not the port authority. It is written and run by Takumi Yamada, a Japanese travel writer. I live in Tokyo; Shizuoka is my second home, and I am there every month — walking the port, riding the water bus, eating at the market — and I run this guide with people who live in Shimizu and know it day to day. The sister site Port of Japan covers 39 of Japan's cruise ports the same way.

Why this site exists

This is, at heart, a local project. Shizuoka sits between Tokyo and Kyoto, and most of the world rides straight past it — yet it has Japan's tea heartland, its deepest bay, its best-loved mountain, and a port town where the tuna lands a short walk from your gangway. We want overseas visitors to see what locals see in Shizuoka, and a cruise call is the perfect first taste.

Most of what passengers find online is either a ship's excursion brochure or a generic travel page written from a desk far away. So we built the guide we thought this port deserved: timed to real all-aboard deadlines, priced in real yen, and clear about what doesn't fit your hours. If your six hours in Shimizu are good, you'll come back to Shizuoka for a week — that's the bet this whole site is making.

Our one rule

Every plan on this site is built backwards from the same principle: be back on board at least 60 minutes before all-aboard. If a sight doesn't fit inside that margin, we say so — even when it's a famous one.

How we verify information

• Ship schedules are checked against the Shimizu Port Cruise Committee's official published timetables, and labelled as tentative when the port has not yet confirmed them.
• Fares, hours and closures are verified against operators' official pages, and dated. If we can't verify something, we say "confirm on the day."
• Mistakes: if you spot one, email us — corrections ship within 48 hours.

How the site makes money

Transparency matters to us. Some experiences and tours link to our partners Viator (a Tripadvisor company) and GetYourGuide; if you book through those links we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Those links are always labelled, and they never change our verdicts — this site tells you when a tour doesn't fit your call, too. We also work directly with select local operators, such as Natural Action for Fuji River rafting.

Photography

Place photos come from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences, each credited on the page and gathered on our credits page. Tour photos are the operators' own, shown through our partner Viator; GetYourGuide tours are shown with our own credited place photos. Every image is served from this site.

Contact

Corrections, partnership enquiries, or a question about your call at Shimizu:
takumi.yamada@monogatari-inc.com

Operators and tourism organisations in the Shizuoka area: we're glad to link official resources and fix anything we've got wrong — write to us any time.