Mt. Fuji, Halcone, and much much more.

Hi there. It was a long but beautiful day. We did a bus, a boat, a cable car, a high speed train and a taxi.

Chris: We were up early and out to meet our Mt Fuji tour in a parking lot somewhere in Tokyo. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now, when we travel or actually before we travel I tend to think big, let’s go to Japan and Vietnam, we can add Nicaragua to our Costa Rica trip, wanna go fly on a helicopter to the top of rock jutting out of the ocean off of Auckland New Zealand ? Rhonda always says yes, then I say , figure out the nuts and bolts and book it, I’m off to finding the next one. I’m not saying I never involve myself in hotels tours etc or that Rhonda never finds places to go or things to do, I’m just saying that our personalities lend themselves to her doing more details than me. I said all that to say, to me, Rhonda told me when to get up and we got in a cab at the hotel and it appeared to me that she told the driver to take us to a random street to a random lot in the largest metropolitan area in the world and somehow there was a bus there that took us on a fabulous tour highlighted by the spectacular Mt. Fuji. I have no idea how that happened.

Rhonda: The first part of the trip was on a nice bus, with nice people, it was about 3 hours for the trip through the city and up to the 5th station on Mt. Fuji. There are 10 so we went half way up. Our tour guide struggled all day with herding kittens (which he did with a very stern and hard voice ) and talking. Not great traits for a guide. He had a cough and also a pattern of repeating himself about every other sentence. And check this out, he would hold up these very elementary 8 x10 pieces of paper to illustrate his point! It was hilarious, no way could anyone past the first row see this.

Then he introduced the driver as Ken, “he is chubby but he is fun” . Now he will always be known as Chubby Ken. Omg! He went on and on about our train tickets and how he is giving us each 2 so that if you lose one you will still have one to show on the other end. Because they are very hard asses about people paying for the train.

It was a beautiful drive but I have to say that the 5th camp was a let down. It was really just a souvenir store on the side of the mountain. No real view of the mountain above us . But I got a lovely steamed ear of corn with butter and we sat outside and enjoyed it.

Chris: Mt Fuji was absolutely the point of the day for me. We were on a bus and we stopped for a break at a Japanese truck stop and I love those stops on international trips but the big thing was Mt Fuji.

It was spectacular, but not at all what I expected. But that’s a good thing because the reality was so much better than my expectations. The only disappointment, and that’s probably too strong a word, is that it’s

only snow capped 4-5 months a year and the guide said now with climate change some years it’s less than 4 months. It’s alway a bit of a jolt to the American Rhonda and I when people in other countries just talk of climate change as the scientific fact that it is, rather than being a hot potato political issue that people play like can be debated. Debate all you want, Mother Nature doesn’t give a flying fuck about your, or our, political opinions. Abuse her as we have done and she will return the abuse a million fold. OK, that’s my editorial but now, back to Mt Fuji.

All of the pictures of Mt Fuji show it snow capped and that was our expectation but as I said above, that is when she is dressed up and in her finest, in fact, a third to almost half the days of the year she is not visible at all due to the very common low clouds and overcast skies. That’s not independent knowledge on my part, it’s what our guide told us. I think almost all tourists who come to Tokyo book a Mt Fuji tour and so many are disappointed because of the weather and never catch even a glimpse of the mountain. Our view was, even tho it was overcast, never obstructed and we feel very fortunate for that.

I have always thought of Mt Fuji as being a singular snow capped mountain visible from everywhere in Tokyo and that was why she is so famous, none of that is true, well it’s kind of true but it’s not at all that simple.

She is not snow capped most of the year, she is something of a singular mountain but she is part of a huge mountain range and although she can be seen from Tokyo, the conditions have to be absolutely perfect which they rarely are. But Mt Fuji is taller than the surrounding peaks and she does stand alone to a degree within the greater range. The upslope of her rise to the peak is clearly visible on all sides and nearly perfectly symmetrical, she really does appear to stand alone but in reality she does not and the drive up, as Rhonda said, we went about halfway up, is absolutely stunning. We were not at all prepared for how incredibly beautiful it was.

Mt Fuji is considered an active volcano and stays on a relatively constant, in geological terms, three hundred year schedule. Her last major eruption was in 1707 and 1708. Uhhhhhh, do the math. Japan , like New Zealand which we visited earlier in the year is a geologic ticking time bomb. It always has been but these people are resilient and they deal with it and cope. Garland Texas is hot in the summer but I’ve never been afraid that we would be the next Pompeii from one minute to the next or slide off into the ocean while we are in the drive thru line at Whataburger. I think I’m good living where I live and just visiting other parts of the world. Besides, it’s not getting hotter in the US, right ? I think I remember some politicians and a “news” network telling me that so it must be true.

Rhonda: It was about a 45 min drive to get to the lake and we were on a ferry for about 15 minutes and then to a cable car up to the top of the mountain Halcones. The view of Mt. Fuji was amazing from there !!!

After that we got on a high speed train to get back to Tokyo that goes about a million miles per hour. We got back in 30 minutes! So, We get off the train and find our way to the exit. Except…… Chris has no ticket left to get out. He did not listen to any of the guide’s instructions and did not keep his tickets after they were validated at the start. Bless his heart. They were not nice about it but finally got exasperated with the language barrier and let us just go.

We were tired and a little rattled so when we got to the hotel we went up to the observation sky bar for some dinner and drinks. We sat our things down and Chris went to the restroom. I heard a disturbance to my right and look over and Jesus, people were all over Chris. I went running over and saw he was pooling blood on the floor and the ground. Turns out he tripped on two steps and fell hitting his shin and head ( glasses broken but no head injury! ) . Chris bleeds very easily so it looked like he had been in a knife fight. So MANY people showed up!!! But no one was doing anything. Me and this other dude helped him get to the bathroom and started wiping up the blood. The security and medics were so inept that it was hilarious. They were trying to wrap his leg but were like tying a damn bow. Anyway, Chris’ pants and socks went in the trash. We were able to wash the blood out of his shoe and get him all bandaged in the room. Yall- it was a thumb print size scrape!!! He is definitely a free bleeder !

We finally got to a bar, had a drink and some eats and played Rummicube. All was well, and it was overall a great day!