Mount Fuji Lawson Photo Spot: Is the View Still Blocked? [ Home ](https://isfujivisible.com) | [ Weather ](https://isfujivisible.com/mt-fuji-weather) | [ Live Cams ](https://isfujivisible.com/mt-fuji-live-cams) | [ Viewspots ](https://isfujivisible.com/viewspots) | [ Sakura ](https://isfujivisible.com/sakura) | [ Koyo ](https://isfujivisible.com/koyo) | [ Plan ](https://isfujivisible.com/plan-your-trip) | [ Visibility by Month ](https://isfujivisible.com/visibility-by-month/2026) | [ Blog ](https://isfujivisible.com/blog) Mount Fuji Lawson Photo Spot: Is the View Still Blocked? ======================================================== August 23, 2026 *Updated August 22, 2026* > **TL;DR:** No, the view is not blocked. The 2.5 metre black screen came down in August 2024 and visitor photos from May and July 2026 show Fuji clear above the blue roof. It is the **Lawson Kawaguchiko Ekimae** store, two to three minutes on foot west of Kawaguchiko Station, and the shot only works from the pavement on the far side of the road, so cross at the signalised crossing about 80 metres along. Go in the morning: our forecast scores put a clear mountain at 52% of July 2025 mornings and 35% of July 2026 mornings, against 16% and 13% of those afternoons. Check the [visibility forecast](https://isfujivisible.com/#visibility-forecast) first. A convenience store became one of the most argued-about places in Japan. Fuji rises directly behind a Lawson in Fujikawaguchiko, the internet noticed, crowds arrived, the town put up a wall, and the story travelled the world twice. Two years on, most of what is written in English about this spot is 2024 news or a rewrite of it, which is why people still turn up expecting a black screen. Anything describing the spot as "closed" dates from the few months the screen was up, and the store itself never shut. Here is what is actually there. --- Is the Mount Fuji Lawson view still blocked? -------------------------------------------- No. As of August 2026 the composition is open: the black screen was removed in August 2024, and what stands opposite the store now is a low barrier put up in August 2025 that keeps people out of the road without hiding the mountain. The confusion is entirely a dating problem, so here is the sequence. | When | What happened | |---|---| | Autumn 2022 | An overseas influencer posts Fuji above the store. Before that, the town's tourism staff say, it was an ordinary convenience store | | May 4 to 5, 2024 | Lawson puts up multilingual no-crossing signs and issues a public apology to residents | | May 21, 2024 | The town hangs a black screen across the road, 2.5 metres high and 20 metres long, made of agricultural shade cloth | | Within a week | Around ten finger-sized holes appear in it. People start arriving to photograph the holes | | End of July 2024 | The cloth is replaced with a sturdier brown sheet, with a QR code in the middle pointing to the town's multilingual visitor guide | | August 15, 2024 | The screen comes down ahead of a typhoon, and the town says it has no timeline to put it back | | December 17, 2024 | Low anti-crossing fences instead, 80 centimetres high, on both sides of the road. Jiji Press reported that the town planned to repaint the crosswalk by the store in green and white a week later, to make it impossible to miss | | August 7, 2025 | A barrier around 1.4 metres high goes up opposite the store, designed to keep people out of the road while leaving the view open. The Mainichi reported it, and the town said etiquette problems were easing | Visitor photos on the store's Google Maps listing from May and July 2026 show the same thing: the mountain above the roof, a handful of people photographing it, and no screen in the frame. The spot is now run on signage instead of blindfolds. What stands there today is a line of yellow water-filled barricades reading "Do not run out into the roadway" and "No Pedestrian Crossing" in English, Chinese, Korean and Thai, plus yellow no-crossing warnings painted onto the ground. One caveat no guide mentions: since spring 2026 the building immediately right of the store has been wrapped in scaffolding, with more of it on structures to the left, and it sits at the edge of the frame. --- There are two Lawsons, and only one is the spot ----------------------------------------------- | | The famous one | The quiet one | |---|---|---| | Name | Lawson Kawaguchiko Ekimae | Lawson Fujikawaguchiko Machiyakubamae | | Address | 3495-2 Funatsu | 1395-1 Funatsu | | From Kawaguchiko Station | About 200 metres, 2 to 3 minutes on foot | 1.2 kilometres, around 15 minutes | | Barriers, signs, guards | All of them | Lawson signage only | Both have Fuji behind them. Only the station one became the story, which is why visitors who find it busy tend to walk on to the other one, where the forecourt is roomier and nobody is managing a crowd. The town hall sits at 1700 Funatsu, so the "town hall front" store is not at the town hall, which is how people end up at the wrong one. --- Getting there ------------- Walk. Leave Kawaguchiko Station, head west along the road in front of it, and you reach the store in two to three minutes without crossing anything: it sits on the same side of the road as the station. None of the three sightseeing bus lines stops closer than the station, so a bus pass buys you nothing here, though it earns its keep everywhere else around the lake ([how to get around the Fuji Five Lakes](/blog/getting-around-fuji-five-lakes)). | Route | Fare | Time | |---|---|---| | [Highway bus](https://highway-buses.jp/course/kawaguchiko.php), Shinjuku to Kawaguchiko Station | ¥2,200 adult, ¥1,100 child | about 1 hour 45 | | Highway bus, Shibuya to Kawaguchiko Station | ¥2,300 adult, ¥1,150 child | about 2 hours 30 | | [Fujikyu Railway](https://www.fujikyu-railway.jp/en/fare/), Otsuki to Kawaguchiko | ¥1,170, plus ¥400 for the limited express | under an hour | | [Sightseeing bus](https://bus.fujikyu.co.jp/mtpass/en/bus/) day pass, for everything else | ¥1,500 adult, ¥750 child | n/a | Do not drive to it. The car park is for customers and cannot take coaches. Lawson made that formal in May 2024, asking four travel companies to drop the store as a tour destination on safety grounds. Some kept selling it anyway. If you are on one of those, you are the crowd, which is one more argument for [doing Fuji on your own schedule](/blog/is-mount-fuji-day-trip-worth-it). --- Where to stand, and how to cross -------------------------------- The frame only exists from the far side of the road. Fuji sits south-southwest of the store, so the road has to be between you and the shop for the mountain to line up behind the roof. From the store's own car park you get a photo of a shop. That one geometric fact is the whole safety problem. People saw the shot, realised they were on the wrong side, and crossed wherever they were standing, on a two-lane road minutes from a busy station. Some backed into traffic while lining up a photo. So use the crossing. There is a signalised crosswalk about 80 metres along, and the town scheduled a green-and-white repaint of the crosswalk by the store to make it stand out. Crossing between stopped cars is the exact behaviour the [Fuji Five Lakes manner guide](https://www.mt-fuji.gr.jp/manner/) singles out: "Make sure to use the crosswalk. Crossing outside of it or against the signal can be very dangerous." --- When to go, and whether Fuji will show up ----------------------------------------- Every other guide treats the mountain as a permanent fixture. It is not. Here is the share of days scoring 8 or higher on the Kawaguchiko side, our threshold for a properly visible Fuji, by morning and afternoon. | Month | Morning | Afternoon | |---|---|---| | July 2025 | 52% | 16% | | August 2025 | 52% | 29% | | September 2025 | 60% | 23% | | October 2025 | 32% | 23% | | November 2025 | 90% | 90% | | December 2025 | 84% | 87% | | January 2026 | 100% | 100% | | February 2026 | 82% | 82% | | March 2026 | 77% | 55% | | April 2026 | 63% | 60% | | May 2026 | 58% | 55% | | June 2026 | 27% | 10% | | July 2026 | 35% | 13% | Those are our own forecast scores for completed months, not on-site observations, and you can read [how they are produced](https://isfujivisible.com/methodology). The pattern is the useful part. In summer a morning is worth two to three afternoons, because cloud builds around the peak as the day warms. From November to February the mountain is out almost all day and the only enemy is your alarm. June and early July are the months to keep expectations low whatever time you go, and our [month by month guide](/blog/best-time-to-see-mount-fuji) has the wider picture. Light points the same way. From that pavement the mountain sits to the south-southwest, and around midday the sun is almost straight behind it, so you end up looking into the glare. In winter the sun stays low all day, which makes that worse. Before about nine in the morning it is still well off to your left. Our guide to the [best time of day to see Fuji](/blog/best-time-of-day-to-see-mount-fuji) covers the rest, and the [Kawaguchiko live cam](https://isfujivisible.com/kawaguchiko-live-cam) watches the same side of the mountain from a few minutes away. So the practical version is an early start. [The first buses from Tokyo](https://affiliate.klook.com/redirect?aid=94629&aff_adid=1193113&k_site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.klook.com%2Factivity%2F159339-tokyo-mtfuji-highway-bus%2F%3Fspm%3DSearchResult.SearchResult_LIST%26clickId%3D96cc8e0b2d) beat the coaches to the lake, and the surest plan is to [stay near the lake](/blog/how-many-nights-in-kawaguchiko) and [book somewhere within walking distance](https://affiliate.klook.com/redirect?aid=94629&aff_adid=1264180&k_site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.klook.com%2Fdestination%2Fp50001218-fuji-mountain%2F3-hotel%2F) so you can be there at first light. --- Why the town went to these lengths ---------------------------------- Worth knowing, because it changes how you behave when you arrive. The forecourt everyone spills onto belongs to a dental clinic. In its own public notice, the clinic explained that the space visitors crowd into is normally its drop-off area for elderly and mobility-impaired patients, and described what two years of a viral photo did to a working surgery: cars parked illegally day and night, taxis and coaches pulling in, patients unable to park and missing appointments, litter, smoking, people eating in the car park, and trespassing onto the roof. Police were called repeatedly. The detail that says the most is this. The clinic tried moving its fence flush to the pavement to shut its land off completely, then moved it back within a single day, because sealing off the private space pushed people into the roadway instead and risked making a local driver the one who hit someone. The clinic also said plainly that it does not object to people taking photographs. So the ask is small. Stay off private land, cross at the crossing, take your rubbish, and keep the noise down on what is a residential street at seven in the morning. Japan has no tradition of lending strangers a toilet, which the regional manner guide states outright, so use the station. --- If it is crowded, or the mountain is hiding ------------------------------------------- The town's own tourism federation now points visitors elsewhere. Its March 2026 feature, headlined roughly "it is not just convenience stores and Fuji", recommends four quieter views in the same town, including the disused rails running into Lake Motosu and the thatched village at Saiko Iyashi no Sato Nenba. We keep a longer list in [quiet places around Mount Fuji](/blog/quiet-places-around-mount-fuji), a wider set in the [12 iconic viewing spots](/blog/mount-fuji-viewing-spots), and every spot mapped with its own live camera on the [viewspots hub](/viewspots). Do not confuse this spot with Honcho Street in Fujiyoshida, the shopping street with Fuji at the end of it. Different city, about ten kilometres away, five minutes on foot from Shimo-Yoshida Station, and it has its own crowding problems: Fujiyoshida cancelled its 2026 cherry blossom festival and has been keeping vehicles out of the neighbourhood since April 1. --- Quick FAQ --------- | Question | Answer | |---|---| | *Is the Mount Fuji Lawson view still blocked in 2026?* | No. The black screen came down in August 2024. A low barrier went up opposite the store in August 2025 to keep people out of the road, and it leaves the view open. Photos from July 2026 show the composition intact. | | *Which Lawson is it?* | Lawson Kawaguchiko Ekimae, 3495-2 Funatsu, 215 metres west of Kawaguchiko Station. Not the Machiyakubamae store 1.2 kilometres away. | | *Which side of the road do I stand on?* | The far side from the store. The mountain only lines up behind the roof from there, which is why crossing safely matters so much. | | *Is it rude to go?* | No. The clinic opposite has said it does not object to photography. The trouble came from crossing dangerously, parking on private land, and treating a residential street as a venue. | | *Can I park there?* | The car park is for store customers. There is no visitor parking, and coach tours were formally asked to stop coming. | --- ### Useful links - **Live visibility forecast:** [isfujivisible.com/#visibility-forecast](https://isfujivisible.com/#visibility-forecast) - **Kawaguchiko live camera:** [isfujivisible.com/kawaguchiko-live-cam](https://isfujivisible.com/kawaguchiko-live-cam) - **Regional etiquette guide, in English:** [Fuji Five Lakes manner guide](https://www.mt-fuji.gr.jp/manner/) - **Highway bus fares and timetables:** [highway-buses.jp](https://highway-buses.jp/course/kawaguchiko.php) - **Every viewpoint with its own live camera:** [viewspots](/viewspots) - **Plan the whole trip:** [trip length, base and itineraries](/plan-your-trip) - **[Mount Fuji Tours Partner](https://affiliate.klook.com/redirect?aid=94629&aff_adid=1235894&k_site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.klook.com%2Fdestination%2Fp50001218-fuji-mountain%2F1-things-to-do%2F)** --- *The photo takes thirty seconds and the mountain does not care whether you get it. Cross at the crossing, stay off the clinic's forecourt, and the shot is yours.* *Affiliate note: Some links in this post may be affiliate links. If you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.* Orkhan Farmanli Creator of isfujivisible.com Share this post [ 𝕏 ](https://x.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fisfujivisible.com%2Fblog%2Fmount-fuji-lawson-photo-spot&text=Mount+Fuji+Lawson+Photo+Spot%3A+Is+the+View+Still+Blocked%3F) [ f ](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fisfujivisible.com%2Fblog%2Fmount-fuji-lawson-photo-spot) [ in ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fisfujivisible.com%2Fblog%2Fmount-fuji-lawson-photo-spot) [ ](https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fisfujivisible.com%2Fblog%2Fmount-fuji-lawson-photo-spot&title=Mount+Fuji+Lawson+Photo+Spot%3A+Is+the+View+Still+Blocked%3F) copied = false, 1500)" class="inline-flex items-center justify-center h-10 w-10 rounded-lg bg-surface-low border-ghost dark:bg-slate-800 hover:bg-slate-100 dark:hover:bg-slate-700 transition cursor-pointer" aria-label="Copy link to clipboard" > [ Back to Blog ](https://isfujivisible.com/blog) You might also like ------------------- [ ](https://isfujivisible.com/blog/mount-fuji-if-clear-day) Aug 22, 2026 [ Mount Fuji 'If Clear': How to Plan a Weather-Flexible Day ](https://isfujivisible.com/blog/mount-fuji-if-clear-day)"Mount Fuji if clear, otherwise Kamakura" is easy to write and hard to run: when to trust the forecast, what to book late, and how to make the call. 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