Kawaguchiko - October 10
This morning we climbed the stairs to the dining hall, located about 60 steps up the hill. It’s over 200 steps to the Cloud Terrace where the library is located, so I feel this is an easier path than yesterday’s exploration. The Hoshinoya Fuji has 40 minimalist concrete cabins built 100 meters straight up a steep mountain slope so navigating anywhere requires using a network of outdoor stairs.
There is a western and Japanese style breakfast offering and both Judith and I choose a western style with eggs. Today we are on our own for exploration of the area.
We walk down the hill to the Red Line bus stop near Oishi Park and hop on swiping our Suica card. I have the Suica app which is available to anyone with an iPhone. It doesn’t work on foreign Android phones, but domestic Japanese Androids have the special chip necessary for Suica. All subway, bus and train transportation and many other stores and restaurants accept Suica payment. Judith has to use a physical Suica Card. Not a big deal I suppose, but weird when you think how many worldwide Android users visit Japan.
We spend about $7.25 (800JPY) on a crowded bus to go less than 6 km to the Mt. Fuji Panoramic Ropeway. It’s a gondola that rides up Mount Tenjo to an observation deck, providing sweeping views of Mt. Fuji.
Picture of Lake Kawaguchiko from the gondola.
It costs about $11.00 (1200JPY) and we spend lots of time up there exploring all the commercial activities up there. You can take a scenic swing out over the mountain side for 500JPY or try a good luck throw of two small earthenware (kawarake) clay discs through a sacred rope ring (100JPY), or purchase a blank postcard, find the 4 stamps to make your souvenir artwork and then have it mailed to wherever you want (500JPY), the Tanuki Chays (Racoon Tea House), souvenir shop, plus an assortment of other activities for visitors. We walk around investigating all these activities and I collect the 4 stamps without the postcard, but we’re mostly up there for the viewing opportunities. There are many observation locations.
The Kawarake clay disk throwing area. The ground around the rope ring is covered in broken clay disks.
At the top of the observation area building was a giant cardboard cut of of what I’m guessing to be an anime figure. I do a selfie whenever I run across these life sized cutouts and this was no exception.
We head back down and walk over to the sightseeing boat ride on Lake Kawaguchiko. This lake is one of 5 lakes in the northern base of Mt. Fuji, hence the area is known as the Five Lakes region. There is a 100JPY discount if you took the ropeway so our sightseeing boat ride cost is 900JPY. The ride is about 20 minutes and we end up on the upper open deck on the port side. We head out under the Kawaguchiko Bridge and the lake opens up so we have an unobstructed view of Mt. Fuji. It’s a fun ride as there are lots of swan shaped pedal boats about. The boats fit 2 adults and are designed to resemble the white swans that naturally migrate to the Fuji Five Lakes region during the cooler months. We didn’t try them out but they cost about 2000JPY for 30 minutes. The real resident wild swans are conditioned to look for these pedal boats. They swim up to these boats looking for bird feed that have been purchased as part of their rental and feed these swans directly from the boat’s window.
A pedal swan boat. Besides this pink colour, you can rent them in white and yellow colours.
The mountain picture taken from the lake.
Back on shore, we look for a place to grab a bite that Judith can eat. We joke about her having the palate of a 5 year old and she’s not far from that. We walk by an Indian Restaurant that has a signboard with a picture of french fries and we decide to try that out. Given that there’s so many things that a trigger her illness, our goal is for an incident free vacation. She orders a side of fries, I order a tandoori chicken salad and vegetable samosas. Both meals hit the spot. As we look out over a busy intersection during lunch, I spot a sign for “Le Pain de Daniel” and point that out to Judith. It’s a french bakery which we decide to explore after lunch and Judith purchases an apple pastry to have later.
We go for walk along the lakefront. Along the way, we see what we think is a farmer’s market but there is no fruits and vegetables for sale, just booths of homemade crafts and a few food vendors. We glance through the market and continue on our lakeshore walk. There are a couple of museums (one about toys and another about gems) near the end of the walkway but none of them look very interesting. We decide to wander back so Judith could purchase some edible items as she’s unable to eat the offerings at our hotel. We go to a Family Mart, the ubiquitous convenience store located everywhere in Japan and gets some fruit and nuts. We also go to a grocery store, but we just ended up walking through one or two aisle and we didn’t buy anything. On our way we spot a laundromat and take pictures for my friend Nancy who is working on a book about them.
It’s mid afternoon and there’s no more we want to see. We walk up to the next bus stop to get back to the hotel and wait in the line up. It seems to take longer than expected, so we crowd onto the one that finally arrives and are lucky enough to find seats. We are about halfway there and the traffic begins to slow. We crawl the rest of the way slightly faster than the speed of someone walking judging by the foot traffic around us. At the end of our trip, it seems the bottleneck is at the Oishi Park stop that is the terminus of the bus line. There are two narrow turnoffs and more traffic than that intersection can manage. Even though there is someone there directing traffic, the shear volume prevents cars from moving fast. And due to narrow turnoffs, the traffic person had to stop cars 50 feet back from the intersection to allow our bus to turn right and then make a sharp left into the bus stop. Once we got off the bus about 30 minutes later than expected, we just walked back to the hotel transfer building. The good news is that the card reader on the bus ride home didn’t work and many of us (not me) didn’t get charged for the ride. We got a quick ride back up the hill to our room where we chilled for an hour until dinner time. The whole day’s activities including lunch cost me about $50 Canadian.
I ordered the other option for dinner, the vegetarian Soy Milk Shabu-Shabu and while it was good, it didn’t compare as favourably as the previous night’s dinner.
We decided to go for a good night’s sleep as we’re on the move tomorrow.
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