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Published: October 12th 2013
Mt Fuji
It's behind the clouds, apparently.On Thursday my plan was to head to Kawaguchi-ko, a lake near the base of Mt Fuji. I had decided on Thursday because the weather forecast on Tuesday suggested it would be the finest day of the three I had to choose from. I had to catch a train to Otsuki using my rail pass, before buying a ticket on the private Fuji Kyuko line to Kawaguchi-ko.
The train ride from Matsumoto to Otsuki was under blue skies. In fact, I am pretty sure I caught a long-distance glimpse of Mt Fuji along the way. The mountain I saw was definitely Fuji-shaped, but in an ominous sign, there was a layer of cloud visible below the summit. Sure enough, as I got closer, the blue skies gave way to cloud.
I arrived at Kawaguchi-ko and while I could see the massive base of Mt Fuji, the summit was completely obscured by cloud. And there was very little indication that this would change any time soon. Nevertheless, I was there, so I headed down towards the lake to ride the cable-car up to the Fuji viewing platform. It wasn’t a long walk, but I seemed to
Kawaguchi-ko
From the Fuji Viewing Platform be the only tourist doing it on foot.
I headed up the cable car and took some photos. I waited there for a bit, in the hope that the weather would change. If anything, the clouds got darker. With Fuji not on show, there wasn’t a great deal to see or do. Being quite a touristy place, there were other options. I opted to go on the sightseeing boat cruise on Kawaguchi-ko Lake. It was 20 minutes, and nothing exciting really.
I decided to then hop on the retro-bus, which goes around the lake to various places. But by this time it was starting to rain so I did a loop on the bus and got off the at the train station. I then caught the train back to Matsumoto, rather disappointed in my outing for the day.
On Friday, I was heading to Nagano. There was only really one thing worth seeing - the Zenko-ji temple. As such, I slept in and took it easy in the morning. The train trip to Nagano was only 50 minutes, but there was a pretty nice view along the way with mountains on
either side. The highlight was the view of Nagano as you descend from the nearby mountain.
I got off the train and walked the couple of kilometres up to the temple. The main street was quite nice and it was an interesting stroll. Once at the temple, there was quite a crowd. I tried to get information from the tourist information booth but there was none to be had in English, unfortunately. I’m not 100% sure though – I have a sneaking suspicion she was saying she didn’t have any English, having misunderstood what I was asking. Oh well, I decided to just walk around and take some photos.
After doing that for a while, I decided to head back to the station. Along the way I did some souvenir shopping and walked around the shops of Nagano for a while. I then caught the train back to Matsumoto.
Saturday was all about travelling to the last leg of my holiday – Tokyo. I checked out of my hotel and once again caught the train to Nagano. From there it was onto the shinkansen for the last time. I arrived in
Tokyo just under 2 hours later. I was expecting Tokyo to be bigger and busier than everywhere else I’ve been, and boy was it! Just the station was packed with people, and much bigger and more confusing. I’m glad I left Tokyo to last because I have been able to learn the ways of the Japanese trains and subways elsewhere first. Therefore, it was a relatively straight-forward process to buy a subway ticket, hop onto the right subway and then have a short walk to my hotel.
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