Minobu-san Almost-Diamond Fuji

I’d quite like to see the Diamond Fuji sunrise from Mount Minobu (Yamanashi Prefecture). Planning on doing a shukubo stay in the temple at its base, and pondered finishing it off with a nice sunrise. Unfortunately, according to my research and calculations, Diamond Fuji happens at Minobu-san around March 10th, but I won’t be there until the equinox, March 21st (or I might be as late as the 24th, depending on how scheduling turns out). Presumably the sun will have moved off the summit of Fuji-san by that point, but surely it’d still be pretty close. Maybe this knowledge of a specific location is too specialised for people to be able to help me, but perhaps someone here will know (or has stronger search-fu than I do).

So, my questions are basically:
(a) is almost-Diamond Fuji still worth seeing, or is it just another regular old sunrise? (I mean, I know Diamond Fuji is also just another sunrise, but… you get my point.)
(b) I’ve read somewhere that the Minobu-san Cable opens early during Diamond Fuji times to take people up there to see it – is there any chance at all this extends as far as the solstice? (I tried checking the company’s website, but it only lists one set of opening and closing times, and doesn’t indicate if they change at any point in the year… but perhaps I was looking at the wrong page of the website.) If it doesn’t, I’m not too sure I want to climb the mountain on foot before sunrise (Google maps says it’s a 2.5 hour hike, but maybe there’s a walking path it doesn’t know about), and I’m almost certain I don’t want to be stuck up there for three hours waiting for things to open.
(c) Where’s the next stop in line for Diamond Fuji viewing? I’m sure I once found a Japanese website listing all the Diamond Fuji locations in chronological order, but I cannot for the life of me find it now.

(And that was a lot of words for something that’s almost certainly gonna prove to be more effort than it’s worth. Maybe on a future trip I can manage a good Diamond Fuji…)