Day 13 - Mount Fuji 富士山

We'd left our visit to see Fuji till last. .
For me, when I'd seen Fuji... I could say, yup! - I've 'done' Japan. I've seen shrines.. temples.. zen gardens.. karaoke bars and I've also seen Mt Fuji.

For the past few days we were hoping that the weather would give us good visibility today, clear enough to get a great view of Fuji.

SO after cobbling together some pretty sketchy plans on how we could possibly get as close to Fuji as our JR passes would allow us; we took the JR Chuo line to Otsuki and then stumped up some additional yen to ride on this cool yet bizarrely hippy lookin' train with the face of Fuji emblazened on it's front, back and it's sides! - which would take us closer still, through Fujiyoshida to Kawaguchiko.






Even the toilets at the Station were Fuji orientated! Obviously, I was the first to notice this! ;o)

<<- This statue casually stood on the pavement beside the roadside without explanation... I had to take a pic, if we couldn't get to see Fuji today then this would have to pass as the pinnacle shot of my brief photography career in Japan. We couldn't quite work out what was going on with this statue. But surely, this is an absolute work of genius.. After leaving the station, we carried on walking toward Japan's near-mythical volcanic mountain in hopes that the soft cloud would shift and present us with a great view of Fuji. However, with what seemed like perpetual slow moving dense white tangles of mist... we were in for a long wait ... and a long walk!



Some time later... we found ourselves walking away from the housing district and along a quiet main road where we happened upon the shiny new cutting edge restaurant: 'Hoto Fudo'.

We guessed that we were getting closer to a prime spot to dump our backpacks and wait a while. So.. at the edge of a tiny patch of crop land we sat staring at the mountain not realising that shed loads of little ants were also keeping us company!

During this while, I'd opened a bar of Meiji chcolate and Spud had decided to distract himself by enticing them with it. As we sat there... Iain must have made squaddrons of countless colonies, erected miniature bridges for them to carry their chocolate accross, and set those ants some pretty intense challenges in an attempt to see their persistance and teamworking skills and to also counteract our fatigue and frustration with that long wait.



And then suddenly! The clouds parted. . . and we copped an eyeful!