Mt Fuji & Hakone

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Hi All,
B’s taking a break from the blog today, so I will be doing the honours. I’ll try not to bore you too much with today’s activities. We made an early start this morning, 7am! We’re still trying to adjust to our new times, we only slept about 3 hours. Got up like a couple of zombies and dragged ourselves downstairs for some breakfast. The coffee helped, barely.
We were picked up at 8.05am from our Tokyo hotel with mechanical precision (you can count on Japanese punctuality!) and left for our tour to Mt Fuji (‘Fuji’ meaning: ‘Rich Samurai’ or ‘Never Die’) and Hakone. We made our way by coach - 1 and 40 minutes of which B spent 90 % of the time napping, whilst I suffered from a numb shoulder from her head and a sore leg from her backside digging into me. In the meantime, I also managed to digest lots of interesting information. It seems Kyoto was the country’s capital up until the 19th century, when it moved to Tokyo (meaning ‘Eastern Capital’) because it is the Imperial family‘s base. Tokyo’s old name was Edo (meaning ‘The River Entrance’).
Our guide, Hiro, was a lovely Japanese lady, very informative and very professional at all times. When we arrived and she pointed out Mt Fuji (completely clouded over) we realised it was highly unlikely it could be observed at anytime. We’ve come all this way and the damn mountain/volcano is hidden in a thick fog!! As luck should have it, I had a postcard of Mt Fuji and held this up to where the supposedly real Fuji was (even taking a picture haha!) - Voila! Mission accomplished, even if in such an unorthodox way.
Now that we had “sensed” Mt Fuji and seen the tourists running around snapping pictures of nothing but themselves, I turned my attention to an ambulance that had arrived with sirens blaring and followed the medics with my camera; some tourist that was probably dying from all the “excitement”! Not seeing that elusive Fuji must have been too much for the poor soul 😉
From Mt Fuji, we made our way by coach, once again, to a restaurant at the summit, where we had a great lunch. It’s hardly surprising that the Japanese have virtually no heart disease. I reckon they should send all these western obese people to Japan, on a crash diet. Problem solved for the NHS! The food is practically all protein.
I found out through our guide, that rice wine isn’t made from your usual rice, but another type of rice. Only 60% of the best part of the grain is used to produce this delicious drink. Of course B missed all the input...
The Japanese are super efficient, almost OCD. Everything is so well organised and I mean literally everything is planned and executed to perfection. Of course they can’t control the weather, but they make the outing informative and interesting even when confronted with these types of problems.
By the way, if you’re going to visit Mt Fuji, the best time to go is between April and August. Personally, I would rent a car or motorcycle and make my way up to the 5th Station. To get to the 9th Station you will need to walk another 8 hours!
After lunch, we headed to the lake at Hakone (another hour in the coach). The lake was once part of a volcano, turned into a mountain several hundred thousand years ago and then collapsed in on its self to create a lake 42 miles in circumference. We took a cable car with the rest of the sheep to the top of a mountain to get a better view of the lake and the Pacific Ocean in the distance. Unfortunately the day was overcast so we didn’t manage to get any good photos.
Finally, we headed back in our coach (dizzy by now!!) and were taken to catch the infamous Shinkansen (Bullet Train). Let me tell you, this was the highlight of the day for me. The train is the fastest in the world. 330 mph. One zoomed by at the station and left us both in awe. Amazing! We were back in Tokyo within 30 minutes!
See you in Kyoto!!
M.

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Comments

[Perry&Niki]

Your not writing a bloody book manoling!!
Hey guys hope your enjoying your.selves. Its sounds amazing we are really enjoying the blog and feel like we are there with you you lucky swines.Lol Take care guys keep safe........!