The water gyoza here — suitably plump, served at casual spots across town — is one of those local dishes that doesn't announce itself. Susono's signature, *susonomi-gyoza*, is steamed using water from the slopes of Fuji, and eating one feels less like a tourist act than a practical lunch. Moroheiya and tea round out what the land produces, quietly, without ceremony.
The city sits in the foothills between three volcanic massifs — Fuji, Hakone, and Ashitaka — with the Kisegawa river threading south through the flat town center. The JR Gotemba Line stops at Susono and Iwanami, both modest stations with the unhurried rhythm of a commuter town that sends people toward Numazu and Mishima each morning. The Suzuki Library, open since the late 1960s, holds a working collection that serves the roughly fifty thousand residents without fuss. Nearby, the Kyū-Uematsu Residence — a mid-Edo farmhouse relocated to Chūō Park and designated an Important Cultural Property — stands quietly among ordinary greenery, easy to walk past if you're not paying attention.
What sits alongside all this is harder to categorize: Toyota's Woven City, an experimental urban prototype for autonomous driving and robotics, is rising on former factory land at the edge of town. The Susanomiya Sengen Shrine marks the old Suzankuchi trail head, a registered World Heritage site, and the Fuji General Fire Exercise draws crowds annually to the old military grounds. Past and near-future occupy the same low skyline, neither dominating the other.
Where to stay
A day is rarely enough.
Booking through these links supports AURA at no extra cost to you.
What converges here
34 within 25 km of the city hall.
- Yasushi Inoue Literary Museum
- Yoneyama Umekichi Memorial Hall
- Mishima City Local Museum
- Rakuju-en
- Sano Art Museum
See the nearest 25
- Numazu City Archives of Meiji History
- Kannami Buddha Statues Museum
- Hakone Ekiden Museum
- Taishō-en
- Narukawa Art Museum
- Numazu Imperial Villa Memorial Park
- Serizawa Kojiro Memorial Museum
- Pola Museum of Art
- Lalique Museum, Hakone
- Izunokuni History Museum
- Hakone Venetian Glass Museum
- Okada Museum of Art
- Hakone Museum of Art
- Yugawara Art Museum
- Hakone Open-Air Museum
- MOA Museum of Art
- Nishimura Kyotaro Museum
- Atami Yamaguchi Museum
- Atami Trick Art Museum
- Atami Castle
- Mt. Fuji and Princess Kaguya Museum
- Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Natural History
- Yokoi Teruko Fuji Museum of Art
- Fuji Motorsports Museum
- Shuzenji Niji no Sato
Distances are straight-line from the municipal office. Each website was checked in September 2026. Some locations © OpenStreetMap contributors.
- Mt. Fuji – Sacred Place and Source of Artistic Inspiration
- Mt. Fuji
- Former Uematsu Residence (formerly located in Ishiwaki, Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture)
- Fuji-Hakone-Izu
- Susono
- Iwanami