- PICS COMING WHEN I FIND SOME DECENT INTERNET THAT WILL UPLOAD THEM! -
So we got up the following day, nice and early with the clear expectations of a spectacular day trip to Mount Fuji. Unfortunately it wasn’t everything we expected it to be, but it wasn’t a completely lost day!
We went ahead and retraced our train route from the previous nights return journey, this time with a little more success than the previous morning’s attempt (i.e. we actually made it there without desperate taxi measures!). In fact it was quite different to the previous morning’s efforts. The tour was set to leave at nine and this time we got there at... 8:15. Somehow shaving an hour’s travel time off the journey, despite only leaving the hostel some 15 or so minutes earlier than before.
So after sitting about for the next 45 minutes we finally got on the road in our big bus with yet another slightly eccentric Japanese tour guide. I didn’t mention it before, but our guide for the afternoon tour of Tokyo was ever so slightly loopy, with a crazed giggly smile.
Our first stop off was the Mount Fuji information centre which detailed how the mountain was formed and offered several interactive displays. So far so good. The weather outside was quite chilly as you would expect of being quite high up and the ground was lightly dusted in snow, something that a lot of the other people on the tour took quite an interest to. They were building small snow men and other such things. I think for some of them the snow must have been a rarity, quite strange really since they have quite the set of mountain ranges full of ski resorts in the northern part of the country at Sapporo. Don’t you feel lucky back home to have had so much snow recently? I hear it’s been quite an eventful few weeks for the weather. No base wrecking skiing attempts at Whitwick quarry or anything Dad??!
After departing the information centre we were supposed to be driving up the mountain to the seventh lookout station. It would not surprise you then to find out that the sky had clouded over, eliminating any chances of a view when we got up there. The clouds were the least of our problems. As we progressed up the road we arrived abruptly at the first station to find the road had been gated off. Apparently the road was iced over so we couldn’t go up. Gritting machines anyone!!
So this served as our second stop off point, a time to walk up the road a little or for the Japanese tourists, another chance to play with the snow. Despite this being a bit of a useless stop with only a couple of other cars in the car park (full of disgruntled passengers, also a little peeved that they couldn’t drive further up the mountain), there was a crazy little old man with a food store, cooking some kind of meat skewers and corn on the cob and trying to sell it to the passengers of our bus. This old man looked dirty. That’s all I can say. I would not have touched his food with a forty foot barge pole. Despite the sickening look of the food stand, an American couple proceeded to buy one of the meat skewers. A second later after biting into it, his face dropped. I mean DROPPED. Any expression just fell out of his face. The little old man grinned, clearly satisfied with his sale. The American guy wondered off, discreetly emptied his mouth and disposed of the rest of the dog meat skewer, or whatever it may have happened to be.
Back on the bus the guide announced it was lunch time. We were driven to a hotel that was situated next to a small theme park and were duly informed that we would not be able to go to the theme park (oh damn!!). By theme park I mean something you could have fit on the back of our house. It consisted of a roller coaster and a set of tea cups or something. The hotel itself was probably twice the size of the park.
We ate lunch, which can be seen in a photo below. It was a traditional Japanese set meal with quite a few "interesting" items. I didn’t find it to be too bad and there was a constant supply of green tea, supposedly very good for your stomach, which I found to be very palatable.
Back on the bus it was time for our cruise of Lake Ashi. Now my fortune received a day earlier was really taking effect. On arrival to the lake the visibility can only be described as poor or maybe terrible. On the lake we couldn’t see the water as the boat went through it and the realisation that the cable car journey that we would soon be going on was also likely to suck something terrible.
It did. There was very little to see on the way up, nothing to see at the top and then surprisingly on the way down in the cable car there was again absolutely no visibility. As soon as we reached the bottom the mist split and for a few minutes it was possible to see the other side of the lake, consequently a few photos were taken!
The bus journey back to Tokyo was mainly spent sleeping for some reason. I woke a few times, once as we were passing through a town that was full of natural thermal hot pools and again when we dropped people off to get on the bullet train. We decided not to bother with the bullet train. Mainly because we were already half way back to the city and secondly because it was shockingly expensive.
The day wasn’t a complete loss; I did manage to get a few good pictures. The best being a picture of a picture in the information centre. I guess that’s the best view of Mount Fuji I'm going to see unless I come back again someday, which I might! Maybe in the summer instead of the winter next time.
The next morning we would fly to Hong Kong via Beijing so another early night was in order. Our time in Japan had come to an end.
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