Shizuoka: What to Actually Do
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Our main guide ranks the eight things most worth your time here. This list goes a layer deeper, the activities that turn a sightseeing stop into something you actually did with your hands or your legs, not just your camera.
Six activities at a glance
| Activity | Where | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Climb Kunozan Toshogu’s stairs | Nihondaira | 1,159 steps, no ropeway ticket needed |
| Walk the Toro Ruins | Shizuoka City | Flat, 30-45 min |
| Pick and steam tea | Makinohara Plateau | A few hours, seasonal |
| Ride the Suruga Bay Ferry | Shimizu to Toi | ~65 min one way |
| Register for a Fuji climb | Any Shizuoka-side trail | Weeks of prep, July-September only |
| Walk Shimizu’s Sushi Yokocho | Shimizu | An hour, plus a meal |
Climb to Kunozan Toshogu instead of riding
The Nihondaira Ropeway is the easy way down to Kunozan Toshogu, Tokugawa Ieyasu’s original 1617 shrine, a National Treasure that predates the far more famous Nikko Toshogu. The other way is on foot: 1,159 stone steps up from the shrine’s base, a genuine leg workout with sea views opening up the higher you climb, and no ticket required beyond the shrine’s own admission at the top.
Walk a Yayoi-period rice paddy
Toro Ruins, in Shizuoka City, preserves a Yayoi-period settlement and its rice paddies, reconstructed pit houses and raised storehouses set among the fields they were built to work. It’s flat, quiet, and takes well under an hour, a genuine change of pace from castle grounds and shrine steps.
Pick tea where it’s actually grown
Makinohara Plateau is the largest contiguous tea-growing area in Japan, and tea-picking and tasting experiences run across the wider growing region, not just here. Shizuoka lost its long-held rank as Japan’s top tea producer to Kagoshima in 2024, but it remains the country’s historic tea heartland, and picking a few leaves yourself is a better introduction to that history than a shop counter.
Cross Suruga Bay by ferry instead of road
The Suruga Bay Ferry runs between Shimizu and Toi, on the Izu Peninsula, roughly 65 minutes each way, a genuinely different way to arrive in Izu than a rental car or the Odoriko limited express, and it puts Mount Fuji behind you across open water for most of the crossing.
Start the Fuji climb paperwork before you pack
If a Fuji climb is on the itinerary, register through the Shizuoka FUJI NAVI app well before you fly: it requires an e-learning safety course, advance registration, and issues the QR-code permit checked at the gate. The Shizuoka-side trails, Fujinomiya, Subashiri, and Gotemba, run July 10 through September 10 only, and all three share a 2pm-3am gate closure that requires a booked mountain hut, unlike Yamanashi’s Yoshida trail, none of them cap daily climbers, but none of them let you through that overnight window without a reservation either.
Eat your way down Shimizu’s Sushi Yokocho
Shimizu, Shizuoka City’s port district and the setting for Chibi Maruko-chan, has a cluster of sushi stalls built around the day’s Suruga Bay catch, a fitting way to close out a Miho no Matsubara or ferry day without needing a formal restaurant booking.
For the day-by-day version of a city-core visit, see the 2-day itinerary ; best places to eat covers Shizuoka’s food beyond Shimizu’s stalls.
One concrete move: if you only add one activity to the standard sightseeing list, make it the Kunozan Toshogu stair climb over the ropeway. It’s free beyond the shrine ticket, and the view earns itself one step at a time instead of five minutes in a cable car.