The Shy Mountain

Local legend has it that Fuji is a shy mountain, only revealing herself some 100 days out of the year. For my trip to see this elusive lady, I’d been toying back and forth with the idea of taking my own transportation to Hakone (an excellent location for Mt. Fuji viewing) or enjoying an organized city tour to the same place.

Both had advantages, the escorted city tour would actually take us part way up the mountain, but by setting my own schedule I might be able to fit in a quick stop at a Japanese Onsen hot spring. It NEVER occurred to me that no matter my decision, I might not be able to see one of Japan’s most famous icons.

I’m woman enough to admit that I don’t really enjoy a lot of group travel situations. I far prefer making my own decisions, and being the star of my own show. However, because the article I’m writing about Mt. Fuji is for a trade magazine, I ultimately figured it would be better to take a guided tour which would be of more interest to the demographic I’m writing for.

The program was well developed, and my kudos to JTB. Had it been a lovely spring day, the type normally serving as the setting for the Mt. Fuji pictures you’ve seen, this probably would have been the ultimate photo-taking opportunity. For our group, it ended up more as a “Let’s see what the weather is doing this hour” kind of day.

The Weather Outside is Frightful

The fickle weather, which ranged anywhere from a light rain sprinkle, to snow flurries to gale force winds, caused our itinerary to be a fluid one. I think this picture of a man trying to keep his hot dog stand from blowing to kingdom come pretty much best describes the weather on the mountain.

The weather kept our poor group leader constantly on his toes. It probably should have been a sign of things to come, when he raced us out of the visitor center, so that we could get inside the mountain gate before they closed it due to bad weather.

“Once we’re inside,” he explained, “there’s no way to turn around till you hit the fourth station.” Hmm. Because of course you want to be trapped on an uphill climb in snow storm conditions. However, none of us yet realized how dramatically the weather actually could change. By the time we’d hit the fourth station, Mother Nature was having a total hissy fit.

For the four minutes I was actually able to brave the Siberian (not an exaggeration) winds, I took this photo of Mt. Fuji. (For your benefit, I’ve drawn a line where I think the peak should be.) I quickly retired to my comfy, WARM, seat on the coach and found that I was one of the last people to seek shelter back on the bus.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane

The remainder of the day was also spent battling various schedule changes. The strong winds in Hakone didn’t make for safe cable car conditions, so we went up the cable car at Lake Kawaguchi instead.

Now, those of you that know me, know how much I DO NOT like heights. A cable car ride is terrifying, and while of course I’ll do it, I won’t like it. So to know we’re going up a cable car in weather that can whip up instantaneous winds of up to 40 meters per second did not necessarily inspire confidence in the alternate cable car. In the end the ride up was only at it’s normal vomit level, and I even managed to open my eyes for most of the ride up. (I've included a nice picture from the cable car station, of the slope of Mt. Fuji.)

Anyway, I won’t write too much more about Mt. Fuji here, except to say that when we finally did get to see little bit of it (just the bottom, but still) it was tremendous. Everyone on the bus started ripping open the bus windows (even at what probably was something like 110 degrees below zero weather) to take photos.

For the rest of my Mt. Fuji wrap up, you’ll just have to read about it in TravelAge West when the article comes out.

We took another Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo, arriving at Tokyo Station around 7 pm (on a Sunday night, just the time that EVERYONE in Japan comes back to Tokyo.) The station was pandemonium, and to get from one place to another you literally had to jump in between two bodies and let the motion carry you where you needed to go. I even saw some “push people” – actual employees hired just to push people along. Phew.

Having said that, I made it home with just one mishap. (I couldn’t get my body out of my herd over to the right track, so I took the wrong train one stop, just so I could get off and turn myself around again.),

Korean Food, Really?

Back at the hotel, Caren and Will were waiting for me, as we’d planned to have our final dinner in Japan together. On a previous day I’d told them I’d worked for the Korean government, and that night they’d decided that since they had an expert n Korean food with them, they wanted to try it.

The area around our hotel, Akasaka was ripe with Korean restaurants, so it was no problem to find one. We ended up having SamGyeopSeol, a type of Korean BBQ, grilling pork on a stone plate. Really tasty. I introduced Caren (and young Will, bad me) to Korean soju.

After dinner we decided we really needed to end the evening with a farewell Sake, (of course mostly to further my research), which ended up as two farewell Sakes. (More corruption for Will.)

Our plans for tomorrow include us visiting the Tsukiji Fish Market early in the morning, before we fly out, so we decided to end the evening fairly early. Happy with Sake in our hearts and Korean BBQ in our belly we headed back to the hotel.