Day 8 – 26 March 2017. Travel – Tokyo – Mt Fuji
Today is another tour day, so once again we were up early to eat breakfast in our room, before meeting Brian and Patti downstairs and heading to the bus terminal in the City. Today we were heading out to Mt Fuji on a tour, however as soon as we woke up this morning, we didn’t have much hope of seeing the mountain. Unlike yesterday which was clear and sunny, today was overcast and drizzling.
After getting to the bus station, it was just a short wait before we were on the way. It is a two hour drive from Tokyo to the Mt Fuji visitors centre and as we headed along the highway, the drizzle continued, but after a while, I noticed that the trees had white on them and it looked to be snowing outside. We continued on and the snow got worse and worse until it was pretty much a blizzard and it was piling up beside the highway.
By the time we got to the visitor centre, everything was white and snow was falling thickly. We went into the visitor centre and discovered that the road up to Fuji was completely blocked with snow and there was no way up there. That didn’t worry us, we’d done this tour before and the snow was something completely new. After the visitor’s centre, we went to our tour lunch place which was pretty amazing. It was themed to a Ninja village which was brilliant. The food was great too as it included curries, tempura and salads. It was traditional dining and the view out of the window of the snow falling was amazing.
After lunch, we hit the road again for the drive to Lake Ashi – once again the snow was falling hard and by the time we got to the lake, the wind had picked up and it was freezing. Luckily we didn’t have to wait long for the boat which takes you along the lake to the base of the Komagatake cable car. There were a lot of people here and we decided to jump on the cable car for the ride up the mountain. In hindsight that wasn’t a good idea and it was snowing at the bottom of the mountain, so by the time we were another 1,300 metres in altitude, it was absolutely freezing and windy. It was so windy, that our cable car was rocking side to side and had trouble docking at the top station, crashing twice into the side of the building before coming to a safe stop. Large icicles were forming on the building at the top of the mountain and snow was building up in piles about a foot high. It was also very slippery up there. We had planned on walking up to the Torii gate, however the wind was too strong so we decided to get back on the cable car and travel back down. We were worried the wind would get too high and the cable would shut and we’d be stuck up there! It all ended well of course and we got safely back down the mountain.
We spent some time in the shops down there before getting on the bus and heading down the mountain to catch the Shinkansen bullet train from Odawara station to Tokyo. When we arrived in Odawara, it was raining and not snowing. We got on the train platform just as our train was approaching. It was very busy on board and we stood as far as Yokohama as we flew along the tracks but we then got seats for the trip to Tokyo. It is always a great experience travelling on Japanese trains. Once in Tokyo, we just transferred to the line back to Maihama and the Disney resort. We managed to get a seat in a Hawaiian burger restaurant in Ikspiari which was sensational. Great burgers. We then bought some items at the grocery store before heading back to the hotel. We bought our Disneyland tickets for tomorrow – so we are going to hit the parks at last!