Nature

Lake Tanuki: 1 Live Camera in Japan

A lake in Fujinomiya, Shizuoka. An Environment Ministry camera takes Mount Fuji head-on across the water. On a still morning it lands in the water.

What you can see

Lake Tanuki sits in Fujinomiya, Shizuoka, west-southwest of Mount Fuji. The camera belongs to the Environment Ministry's Internet Nature Institute and takes the mountain head-on across the lake.

This site carries four cameras pointed at Mount Fuji, and this is the one that is composed as a picture. The other three watch the summit vents as a volcano, track landslide movement, or serve forestry research; in each the framing follows the purpose rather than the mountain. Lake Tanuki is the only one placed to show it.

With water in the foreground, a windless morning turns the surface into a mirror. The mountain standing upside-down in the water has its own name in Japanese, sakasa-Fuji, the inverted Fuji. When the wind picks up the surface breaks and the reflection is gone.

Mount Fuji stands alone and makes its own cloud. Assume most days it will not be visible.

Cameras you can watch now: 1

All 1 are still images. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

• Sample August 2026

  Mount Fuji from Lake Tanuki

  Fujinomiya, Shizuoka · Nature

  The classic head-on view of Fuji across the water. On a windless morning the whole mountain is mirrored in the lake.

  MOE Still, hourly Open the official page →

When to watch

It refreshes once an hour. Nothing in motion will show.

The mountain is usually out from about 07:00 to 09:00. As the air warms, updraughts run up the slope and build cloud, and by early afternoon it has often gone. It sometimes clears again towards evening, and the mountain can turn red just before sunset.

Lake Tanuki is known for Diamond Fuji around the 20th of April and of August, when the sun rises out of the summit. The camera only refreshes hourly, so catching that minute is luck.

Winter air is clear and the mountain shows well. A morning with the snow-covered peak lying in the water is the best this place offers. Nothing shows at night.

If it isn't showing

All four cameras on Mount Fuji, from four directions, are in Mount Fuji, including the one that looks up from the Yamanashi side.

Mountains in the order the first snow settles on them are in First Snowcap; how to read a lake camera is written up in a separate piece. Every mountain and forest camera is in Nature.

Where to find Lake Tanuki

• Shizuoka5

Agencies publishing the cameras on this page

• Ministry of the Environment — Internet Nature Institute (PDL 1.0) — Official site

The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.