For my last day in Japan, Deanne thought it would be a good idea to drive to Mt. Fuji. It’s about 60 km away from the base, which means on a clear day (which happened once during my visit) you can see it from the base.
But remember, dear readers, that 60 km means up to a 3 hour drive.
We made it there in just under 2 hours (hit rush hour traffic coming home so it took a little longer).
The drive to Fuji was gorgeous. I never realized how mountainous Japan was.
We passed several small towns on our way.
If you look to the center and a tidge right, you can see Mt. Fuji peeking through the clouds.
Fujikya is an amusement park with roller coasters that gave me vertigo by just looking. See that vertical drop? As in perpendicular to the ground? I’d have to be unconscious to be on something like that.
We stopped at a rest station about halfway up the mountain. My nephew did not want to take a selfie because he didn’t want his image on the internet. This from the kid who begged for a Facebook the minute he turned 13. He refused to smile, so I did too.
Instructions for how to use the toilet. I couldn’t resist.
It’s not climbing season yet, so we drove to the highest point we could–5th Station. Climbing season starts tomorrow, so the place was buzzing. Lots of picture-taking and souvenir-shopping and a little bit of gear-buying.
Here’s our feet on Mt. Fuji. Did you know it’s a volcano? So I’m standing on a volcano, which makes me pretty badass.
Chloe said, “put this on your blog and say ‘Julie and niece Chloe on Mountain Fuji. We are in the clouds.'” That’s a better caption than some of my students can write. And I’ve done zero filtering here, so all that while behind us? Clouds. We were literally IN THE CLOUDS.
A place to sleep and dine at Mt. Fuji. If you squint, you can also see they have wifi. On Mt.Fuji. I seriously marvel at what mankind can do sometimes. And then I flip by the E! network and that marveling goes away.
Proof I was there on this day, at that elevation. Ask Siri for the metric conversion to know how many feet high I was.
Another shot of Fuji on our way down the mountain.
Deanne kept stopping on the way down because the clouds kept lifting, and here we have some blue skies even.
What a great way to spend my last day. We stopped at a 7-11 and grabbed some lunch, we stopped at a rest stop and grabbed Japanese snacks, and now it’s 8:45 and I’m going to try to stay up as late as possible because I need to sleep on the flight tomorrow if I have any hope of kicking the jet lag when I get back to Utah. Please feel free to share jet lag recovery tips, because it’s freaking me out.
So glad your blog is back! And…the toilet instructions do not surprise me one bit. The two “X” pictures seem to be the how-to's for the Japanese “toilets” — I saw them, but never used them. I preferred to wait in line for a western-style loo!
love you!
mom