Li's Blog: Day 4: Mt. Fuji

Today I went on a tour to the Mt. Fuji area. We met at 7:20am and drove for a couple of hours. There was a pit stop for pee breaks and inside the women's washroom, I find this:

There are two aisles of stalls. If the light is green, the stall is open. If the light is red, it is occupied. It also tells you whether it's a sit-down toilet or a squatting toilet. Below are pictures of the washroom cleaners...

First stop: The Forest of Trees. I did not make that name up. There are two natural caves in the area. The first is a wind cave and the second is an ice cave. My tour included the ice cave which is cooler anyways (hehe...pun). We went past the entrance to the wind cave and walked through the forest. It was a difficult walk with lots of rocks. I'm not sure how all the seniors made it. Did I mention that I was the only non-Japanese local on the tour? I was also the only person in my age group. There were a few kids, their parents, then a lot of 60+. The tour guide spoke a little English and filled me in a bit along the way. Mostly I just figured it out.

Then began the long line-up into the ice cave. Inside the ice cave there are parts where it's really slippery and the ground's uneven and the ceilings are low. At one point, we all had to squat and waddle along. I seriously don't know how the seniors did that one either! Pictures turned out bad inside.

Wind cave on the left, ice cave on the right. Ice is definitely a more interesting path.

This is basically what I had to go through. I only bumped my head once and didn't fall down. That's more than I can say for everyone else.

It was really cold in the ice cave! 0 Celsius!

When we got on the bus, we got our bento. It was really good! I ate everything. It could have been because I was really hungry too.

Next we went to the 5th Station of Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is split into 8 stations with pit stops every so often for hikers. The 5th station is a popular tourist trap. So of course we went! The view below was prettier than the view above. It was really windy and cold! I sent postcards! Someone I knew said that they got to take sticker pictures too but I didn't see it. Souvenirs were more expensive up there. Luckily I figured that would happen and bought my souvenir down below. It was almost double on the mountain. The only thing was the postcards. Below I saw them for 100 yen each. On the mountain I saw them for 150 yen each. I refused to buy them at the post office and saw a souvenir stand selling a pack of 10 for 480 yen. Since I was sending a few anyways, I bought the pack.

We were very lucky actually. It was raining hard when we first set out on the tour. It stopped raining but was gloomy in the forest and ice cave. (Side note: the tour guide told me that inside the forest no light penetrates and there is no phone signal...so lots of people go there to commit suicide. It's famous for suicides. O_o) It was a clear sky when we hit Mt. Fuji. Our last stop of the day was a village surrounding the natural spring water from the mountain and it was nice and sunny.