Glimpses of something special


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Asia » Japan » Shizuoka » Mt Fuji
June 4th 2012
Published: June 12th 2012
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We set off for the Fuji five lakes area from Tokyo, it's called this because there are five large lakes just north of Mt Fuji where good views of the extinct volcano can be had.

We stayed one night at K's House and moved to a hotel the following morning because the hostel was fully booked. The next place we were staying had been overbooked so we were moved to another hotel! It worked out in the end and we got our first opportunity to lie in an onsen (a bath of hot spring water). It was relaxing but a bit boring since we are separated by gender and no-one else spoke English!

At 5.30am George got his first sighting of Mt Fuji. I sadly missed it having failed to separate from my duvet and by 7am it was shrouded in cloud- d'oh! We took a bus and headed into the cloud to reach 5th station on Fuji, hoping to pop up above the clouds. It was freezing up there! We climbed up to the snow line to have our lunch and amidst the swirling cloud we did get some great glimpses of the summit.

In the afternoon we visited an ice cave, an unusual spot where you feel the blasts of cold air as you approach the entrance. The cave had been used for centuries as a source of ice, it was formed by air bubbles in lava. After this chilly visit we trekked over some hills to warm up. We had beautiful views and were surrounded by a mature forest. We were the only ones on the trail which meant we had a few encounters with wildflie. We walked to within a few metres of an Owl snoozing on a branch before it silently swooped away. George disturbed a deer tramping down a hill and all he saw was it's bottom bobbing up out of the undergrowth as it sprinted away. We met a cicada shedding it's skin and many other birds were heard or seen on the way. The trail was littered with viewpoints for Mt Fuji but we only saw a blanket of cloud, that is until we came across one of the final viewpoints and the top of Mt Fuji poked through the clouds- Hooray! I finally got a sighting of the mountain 😊 It seemed rather surreal hanging so high in the sky amid an expanse of cloud.

We indulged in Western food while in Fuji which was surprisingly cheap; we visited an Indian restaurant twice and a French restaurant where we couldn't read the menu so just described various meats to the chef for our starters and mains. The chef was very friendly and gave us extra large portions and a free slice of apple pie for dessert as he was closed the following day and it would be thrown out otherwise.

The last day was our wedding anniversary, we took a cable car to a nearby viewpoint for Mt Fuji, just in case the cloud cleared again and we tried out our wedding dance. It was fun but definitely rather rusty! There's a video of it but we'll need bribes to show it!


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George forging a new pathGeorge forging a new path
George forging a new path

(or 'getting lost' as Kathryn puts it)


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