Murayama Sengen-jinja is the quieter ancestor of the Fuji pilgrimage. Long before the climbers of Edo came in crowds, ascetic mountain priests of Shugendō trained at Murayama on the southern slope of Mount Fuji, and the shrine stood at the beginning of a trail up the mountain. The old name for the place is a reminder that this was a monastery as much as a shrine, a base of mountain monks who practised purification and climbed in rigorous seasons. Large cedars shade the grounds, and a stone path leads between moss-covered stones and old wooden buildings, so the place feels more like a forest sanctuary than a tourist stop.
The Murayama route up the mountain was one of the old ways to the summit, though it has long been overshadowed by the more popular trails, and it is not marked for the average walker. The shrine is better treated as a place to understand why Fuji has been sacred rather than as a trailhead.
Fujinomiya, the nearest city, has more than a hundred thousand people, with fuel, restaurants and every service, and it is famous for its fried noodle dish, yakisoba, which you can eat at stalls and diners. The great Fuji-san Hongū Sengen Taisha, the head shrine of all Sengen shrines, stands in the centre of town, and water from the mountain's snowmelt wells up in a pool beside it. Fuji city to the south is an industrial place with paper mills and a view of the volcano from every road.
For riders, the southern side of Fuji is the less crowded side, with wide, quiet roads that climb through forest and open grassland, such as the Asagiri highland, where dairy farms spread out under the cone and the air smells of cut grass. The surface is good, the corners are gentle and the views, when the weather allows, are enormous. Cloud hides the summit more often than not, especially in summer, so early morning in late autumn or winter gives the clearest views. Mihonomatsubara, the pine grove on the Shimizu coast, is the other piece of the day, a long beach of black sand and wind-bent pines looking back across the bay to the mountain.