Ah! Our first tourist trip!!! Was sooooo good to be a tourist finally! Love it! :-D We had simply an amazing day, it was beyond what I could have ever imagined! (I warn you now... there are going to be LOTS of photos on this post!)
We got up super early! 5:45am our alarms were set, with the aim to catch the 6:37am train. We had to be at Hamamatscho Bus Station to leave on our coach at 9am. Which would mean travelling through Tokyo in Rush Hour! There was NO WAY I was going on an hours train journey to be squashed! As if I wasn't worried enough with the coach journey! hehe, so yup! We were still pretty squashed to be honest, but nothing tooo uncomfortable
We left the bus station at about 9:05am and the coach journey went pretty fast! We are used to the old "slow coaches" in England... and there was none of that here! Our coach was overtaking cars and everything! hehe.
Before we knew it, we were out of central Tokyo and heading towards Yamanashi Prefecture to see Mt. Fuji. We saw loads of Japanese nature and beautiful landscapes on the way!
It wasn't long before we started to see Mt. Fuji!!!
The day had started off very cloudy but by the time we got to see Mount Fuji the sky was beautifully clear! We had amazing visability! None of it was covered by clouds at all!!! We could even see the snow on the top! AMAZING!
We stopped at Mt. Fuji's Visitor Center at the foot to take photos and admire the amazing autumn coloured leaves!!! You know... people can tell you as much as they like that the Autumn Leaves are unbelievabley red... and you won't believe them... until you see them for yourself! I was sooooo amazed!! I wanted to take one home with me! A tree that is! haha! Ow, I was really amazed how far away Mt. Fuji looked even though we were stood at the very bottom!
We only staying at the visitor center for 20mins and then we jumped back on the coach and continued up the Mountain! We were headed for Fuji's 5th Station. There are 10 stations on Mt. Fuji, the First Station is the visitor center and the 10th station is the peak! The 5th Station is over half way up at an altitude of 2305m!!! My ears were popping all the way up! Our tour guide warned us that it was very windy out and that the temperature was at 2° so we put an extra layer on... which just wasn't enough for what we were about to experience!
As we got blown off the bus we headed towards the red torii gate, as we had been told that if we went through there, we would come to a shinto shrine and there was an observation platform that we could look down at the view and also up to the peak of Mt. Fuji.
Unfortunately, by the time we had reached the 5th station, clouds were covering the peak of Mt. Fuji, but you can see how much closer we are than from the visitor center!
We had a look around the rest house at the food and picked up a free souvenir, and more than anything kept out of the cloud and the wind! We headed back to the bus! At the beginning of the tour I had said to Fran I thought that being a tour guide would be a good job, but immediately changed my mind! Our tour guide was nice and had lots of information to tell us, but when she counted us after the 5th station, there was an elderly couple missing. She went to look for them, but couldn't find them. She announced to the bus that she couldn't find them and the coach set off... I was shocked, she was just driving the coach back where we had been dropped off. I saw the man and told the tour guide, so she went to get them, but was so rude to them because they had put us "behind schedule"! I felt so sorry for them... no one can help getting lost!!!! Hm... she was a bit funny - she had lots of interesting facts about Japanese history which was nice to have an insight into but then... she decided she needed to sing us a song... a song?! I suppose at least it's topical!
Anyway, we went back to the bottom of the mountain and ate our lunch! Then straight off to Hakone!!!! I hadn't really paid much attention when I booked the tour about the Hakone bit... I was too excited about Mt. Fuji to get excited about anything else :-) hehe. On the way to Lake Ashi in Hakone we saw lots and lots and lots of BEAUTIFUL nature!!!!
It took us just over an hour to get to Lake Ashi, which is mainly famous for it's view of Mt. Fuji... but we couldn't see Mt Fuji at all any more :-( we could see lots of other mountains though and it was beautiful!!!! When we were on the boat, we went all the way to the top platform!
This is where we were heading - Mt. Komagatake, the building at the bottom is the cable car entrance and you can see a small square building on the top of the left mountain, that's where we were going! As we got closer and closer there were clouds forming around the top of the mountain! 2 mountains in 1 day... that's gotta be unlucky?!
We all thought it was kinda pointless going up there if there was thick clouds but we had no idea how amazing it would actually be up there!!! I have never experienced winds like it!!!!
It was cold, it was windy and we were stood in the clouds....
Looking back at the cable car station.
Looking back at the station again... because it was soooooo windy the clouds were moving very fast so every couple of minutes the sky would become clear for a few seconds! It was fun!
Never in my "real" life have I ever imagined seeing something so naturally spectacular as this was (sorry for the bad English wording!)
The clouds cleared and we could see everyone else on the footpaths and the temple at the top of the mountain. But literally 5 seconds later, we couldn't see anything again! Very surreal!
We got called back, they said that the gale was getting too strong and it would be a good idea for everyone to take the cable car back down! So we were only there for about 10minutes but it was just incredible!!!!!
I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy to say WE SAW MT. FUJI AGAIN!!!!!! this felt really really special, definitely a memory I will treasure forever and ever!
We had an absolutely awesome, incredible, breathe taking day!!!! And like I said before, sooo nice to share it with Fran and actually be a tourist! We got back on the bus and it took us to Odawara, where we were going to catch the Shinkansen back to Tokyo! So much fun, and only took us 30minutes to get back from Shizoka Prefecture!!! Amazing!
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