Although there is only one day in between from my last posting, a lot of stuff happend and I had time to write it down. I was at mount Fuji which was totally awesome! Afterwards I had a bath in an Onsen. Hit by the article for details
I am currently on the bus on the way heading to Tokyo again. I want to see Nikko tomorrow for a day trip and than stay the rest of my time here in Tokyo to relax and take part of one the cherry blossom parties!
Yesterday (Monday) I went from Nara to Kawaguchiko. It took me about 8,5h to get there and it was an adventures journey. I arrived by Shinkasen in Mishima and wanted to take the bus up to the village as it was mentioned in the directions I got. In Mishima it did snow a lot already and some people were waiting for the bus that were scheduled earlier already for two hours. A couple from from Taiwan actually just gave up waiting when I came and went back to Tokyo. Luckly they gave me their tickets as they didn't need them any longer. So waited about an hour for my bus and it didn't show up. There was one Japanese guy also waiting for the same bus. He told me that the next bus will come for sure soon. After a while, a bus came. It took us about an hour to go to a place called Gamba, which is half of the way to go up to the village next to mount Fuji. We waited there for the bus we needed to change to for another hour in a heavy blizzard. I was tempting to cancel the trip and go directly to Tokyo. After a long time, everyone was freezing already and our bus didn't came at all, the simply used a random bus to bring us up the mountain. Everything was in Japanese only and the only person who could speak English a little bit, was the guy who was waiting in Mishima as well.
The blizzard was incredible. We drove like about 20 or 30 minutes and had to stop for about an hour, because cars got stuck in the snow and needed to be towed away. Nevertheless we managed to get up and I reached Kawaguchiko at 21:30 (instead of 18:30)
Kawaguchiko is the Kitzbühel of Japan. Like Kitzbühel, it is a famous village in a mountain area and lot's of things you can do there. I stayed in a very nice hostel and met some people from United Kingdom there. They arrived a day earlier and said they couldn't see the mountain because of the clouds. Somehow we got along with each other and we hiked to to a view point for mount Fuji today. Although it's not really possible to go to Fuji in May, I met two Russians that still planed to hike up up the mountain. I hope they manged to do so without any troubles. Actually the weather was perfect for doing that. The sun was shining all day long.
Later we went down to the village again and walked around the lake. The view was brilliant and I don't regret that I spent so much time on the way to get there. The British couple went to Tokyo early afternoon but I will meet them again later in the city.
I used the afternoon the have a bath in one of the Onsens. An Onsen is a Japanese thermal bath which is extremely hot. Like nearly everything in Japan is clean, you needed to shower and wash yourself until you are really clean and then go to the bath. I spent about two hours and feel really relaxed and clean now.
I went back to my hostel and took the bus to Tokyo, where I am currently writing this :-)
From somewhere between Kawaguchiko and Tokyo, Japan, Dominik
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Japan Tour 2010 |
Releated articles of my tour
- Japan Tour 2010
Main article about the trip
- Day 4
All about Tokyo and first impressions of Japan
- Day 11
Visiting Kyoto, Hiroshima and it's sad history, Himeji castle, Osaka, Nara
- Day 12
My incredible trip to mount Fuji, having a bath in an Onsen and walking around in Kawaguchiko
- Day 16
Tokyo again in cherry blossom, fish market Tsukiji, seeing the three monkies in Nara and Yokohama
Photoblogs from the trip