Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Fuji-san!
As one of the only tourist attractions in my prefecture, one day of Heather's trip was dedicated to seeing Mt. Fuji. I had to teach a few morning classes, but as soon as I was done, we hoped on the train and we to see Fuji.
Getting to Fuji from where I live isn't exactly short. It takes about 2 hours. First you have to take the Chuo train line to Otsuki and then transfer to the FujiQ train line. The FujiQ line is the most expensive private train line in all of Japan so I'm sure you can imagine the cost of the ticket if you take the line from start to finish. It is also ridiculously slow. It's only saving grace is that the scenery along the route is quite nice.
I had hoped that we could take a bus up to the 5th station on Fuji and check things out but at that time of year, the 5th station is closed and there are no buses to the mountain. While we couldn't go up Fuji, we did find a bus that would take us around the Kawaguchi lake and provide a nice view of the mountain. We got on the very last bus around the lake and thus did not have much time to spend taking pictures outside as we had to take the bus right back, but our bus driver was super nice and actually stopped for a bit at a really nice viewing site and let us spend time taking pics. Several days during Heather's trip had been kind of dreary, so we were luck that they day was really nice and that we could actually see Fuji.
It was actually my first time really getting a good and close up look at the mountain as well. All the other times I'd been to the Fujiyoshida/Kawaguchi area were either at night or when it was cloudy and you couldn't really make out Fuji. Instead of taking the super slow train back home, I found some bus information at the train station and we hoped on a bus to Kofu and took a train from there. It was both a faster and cheaper option.
Getting to Fuji from where I live isn't exactly short. It takes about 2 hours. First you have to take the Chuo train line to Otsuki and then transfer to the FujiQ train line. The FujiQ line is the most expensive private train line in all of Japan so I'm sure you can imagine the cost of the ticket if you take the line from start to finish. It is also ridiculously slow. It's only saving grace is that the scenery along the route is quite nice.
I had hoped that we could take a bus up to the 5th station on Fuji and check things out but at that time of year, the 5th station is closed and there are no buses to the mountain. While we couldn't go up Fuji, we did find a bus that would take us around the Kawaguchi lake and provide a nice view of the mountain. We got on the very last bus around the lake and thus did not have much time to spend taking pictures outside as we had to take the bus right back, but our bus driver was super nice and actually stopped for a bit at a really nice viewing site and let us spend time taking pics. Several days during Heather's trip had been kind of dreary, so we were luck that they day was really nice and that we could actually see Fuji.
It was actually my first time really getting a good and close up look at the mountain as well. All the other times I'd been to the Fujiyoshida/Kawaguchi area were either at night or when it was cloudy and you couldn't really make out Fuji. Instead of taking the super slow train back home, I found some bus information at the train station and we hoped on a bus to Kofu and took a train from there. It was both a faster and cheaper option.
