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Published: March 21st 2014
We started our Japan adventure with perhaps one of the most iconic images – Mt Fuji. And possibly one of the coldest places we could find!
We landed late afternoon at Narita Airport and stayed the first night in an airport hotel. It was average. Large room (meant to be a triple but had two doubles and a single, plus a cot for Katrina), hot shower, double glazing and blackout curtains. But worn. We took their free shuttle back to the airport and joined the long queue to swap our Japan Rail (JR) Pass voucher for our pass. We were glad the kids woke early and we went back to the airport earlier than we'd planned! We took the new N'EX train into Shinjuku station, one of Tokyo's transit hubs. As with all the trains we'll take, we'll only have two seats as we haven't bought a rail pass for the girls. But there was plenty of space around the seats, and after a while (after we'd stopped at a couple of other transit hubs) we could spread out more.
From Shinjuku we took another JR train, the Limited Express Kaiji, to Otsuki, where we changed to the private
Fujikyuko line. The JR train was late (I know! We thought Japanese trains ran on schedule too!) and they held the train to Kawaguchiko for us. We, and a few others, were rushed to the front of the ticket line and hustled aboard the train. I'm glad we didn't have to wait as we were slowly gaining altitude and it was cold. And wet. Not a good omen for seeing Fuji, constant drizzle and cloud cover down to our knees.
We climbed higher to get to Kawaguchiko Station (905m). We chickened out of the 15 minute walk to the hostel and took advantage of their free pick up service. And took advantage of warm tourist info office to wait, coming out armed with maps and discount vouchers. The bulk of the maps / vouchers / guides / flyers etc were in Japanese, with very few in English.
The hostel (K's House Mt Fuji) is pretty good. When we booked a few weeks ago, we could only get an ensuite room. Its a four futon room but we aren't paying for, or using, the fourth futon. We have the small inflatable mattress from our travel cot for Katrina, though
she will probably just share with us most of the time. The ensuite is a joke though – at first glance its cute but becomes annoying as soon as you try to use it. Its like a little capsule, the walls, floor, ceiling, bath/shower, sink and toilet are all one flowing piece of plastic, and the whole thing is little bigger than an airline toilet. So cute and compact, but not fun to squeeze into for these average sized westerners.
Luckily the following morning dawned bright and clear. But even colder. This is why we came loaded with lots of merino layers for the kids. We could see Mt Fuji from the hostel, but through a line of trees. However, once outside and heading towards Lake Kawaguchiko, the views became better. Samara was very excited about seeing “her” mountain. Right from when we said we were visiting Japan, she has had some pictures of Mt Fuji and cherry trees that she has been showing people. Its the one thing she has focused on, and now we were here. Three year old excitement is infectious! And we were a lot closer to the mountain than we thought, it towered over
the town.
We went for a walk round the lake, stomping in the piles of old snow and trying to burn off a little energy. Poor kids have had a couple of days cooped up on planes and trains. We were aiming for the 'ropeway', a gondola up the side of a hill with viewpoints out to Mt Fuji. We took our time getting there as we'd left so early, and were looking forward to getting to the top for a hot drink. However, just as it was about to open, someone came out and said it was closed today because of the wind. It was pretty windy – but we'd noticed it more for the cold than the strength. Average temp today about 5C before taking wind chill into account. You'd think they could have told everyone earlier that it was closed instead of making us all stand in the cold waiting. We were glad it wasn't on our list of must-do's here. It just meant we didn't have to rush round the others places we wanted to see.
We took the Retro Bus round the lake to another recommended viewing place. It was described as a
park, but lavender garden and restaurant would have been more accurate. I had pictured a woodland type park and Colin thought it would have been a kids playground type park. There were a few bare, stunted trees. And we found a swing and slide when we walked along the lakeside track. We took our lake and mountain photos, ate some lunch sheltered from the wind (in the sun it was quite nice) and slid down the slide a few times, then caught the bus back.
We switched to another Retro Bus line and took a scenic ride along the town side of Lake Kawaguchiko and over to Lake Saiko. From here the bus dropped us at the 'Wind Cave', where we had 3/4 hour to explore before the next bus came along. Lack of facilities made it easy to fill in time. There was a small cafe and shop, and some cold concrete bathrooms (but no baby change area). We used one of our discount vouchers to get into the cave. Though we actually paid less than what was on the voucher. It wasn't a big cave, and there was no tour, but it was pretty self explanatory. Lots
of icicles, piles of cut ice for cold storage, and racks where seeds, nuts etc used to be stored. It only took about 10 minutes to walk round, just the one path split into 'there' and 'back' and several blocked off smaller caves. Interesting.
And that was about it for our experience in Kawaguchiko. There are quite a few museums, but none that leapt out and grabbed out attention enough, especially with the girls in tow. It would have been nice to go up the ropeway, but we plan to visit the Hakone area and there are a couple there. It would have been nice to visit the bat cave or the forest or one of the hiking trails, but it was just too cold. In summer, we could have spent a lot longer here. But we would have missed so much snow on Mt Fuji.
We had hoped to be able to take the bus up to Mt Fuji fifth station, it usually opens around end March – beginning April, so we could have been a little early anyway, but apparently the past month has been very snowy and so the road wont be open for a
while. We'd tried to get a booking at the hostel for later in our trip, but it was even busier with only dorm beds free, and even if we'd wanted to put the kids in a shared dorm, they aren't allowed.
Next stop – Hiroshima. Hope its warmer there!
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Erika K
non-member comment
Kawaguchiko
We love to read that you are still travelling around the world as travelbug tribe. What a great destination: Mt. Fuji! Enjoy!