Day 4 begins with a really sketchy meetup just outside Tokyo Station, with a tour guide who’s holding a pink plushy heart for us to identify her by…
I was actually concerned enough that I shared my location with the gang on Discord, and my sister in the “Find My…” app.
Suffice to say – the tour did start off shaky, but we were ok! We were underway to some destinations near the foot of Mt. Fuji – at this time of year, it was too cold to go up the mountain itself and in fact it’s banned for tour groups at this time of year due to how risky it is. Experienced climbers would have to privately organise their own climbs if they wanted to.
About 90 minutes out from Tokyo, we started to see signs of Mt. Fuji – and honestly, it’s gorgeous. I didn’t expect it to affect me, but seeing such a huge mountain physically in the distance from me is very different from looking at a picture of it.
I can see why the ancients worshiped this mountain.
There were four destinations we’d be visiting – taking us about 12 hours for the day:
- Gassho Village
- Oishi Park
- Oshino Hakkai
- Arakurayama Sengen Park
There was a slight change in the destinations due to one of them being under maintenance after some weather damage. Still, we were promised that there were still plenty of beautiful locations and photo opportunities for us 🙂
Gassho Village
Our first stop – there was a nice crisp gentle breeze – interestingly there were stands and stalls with Fuji apples, Taiyaki, and other goods for sale. There was even a Halal uh… Kebab shop available! 😅 We were definitely in a tourist trap. It wasn’t horrible, but I at least, personally felt a bit silly with the village. I twas nice to look at the layout of the village – but our tour guide let slip that it was a rebuilt village after being destroyed by a large landslide in the 90s; so now no one was allowed to live there, only work there as a tourist spot.
Still, we weren’t going to discount everything and it was nice to see how things “used to be”.
We took a look around, and ended up buying a couple snacks – a Taiyaki, and a Fuji apple (because of course, Fuji apples at Mt. Fuji!)
The apple was, ok! It actually hit the spot – although it didn’t feel as nice texture wise as the Fuji apples we get in Australia 😂
On to our next stop!
Oishi Park
This was by Lake Kawaguchiko it offered honestly GORGEOUS views of Mt. Fuji – but was PACKED with people from other tour busses. I managed to pick up a souvenir for my sister (a Fuji-san Carabiner Mug) and Annie and I managed to take some lovely photos together.
And of course, for a laugh – I had a “senior moment” and accidentally snapped myself with a selfie shot while trying to use my phone camera…
Our group was doing pretty well, and our next destination we would be able to stop by for a bit, and have lunch! So we were pretty eager to move on…
Oshino Hakkai
Oshino Hakkai was a another traditional village area – with a more modern part attached where people actually lived this time round.
The village itself was home to several aquifers that were fresh spring water sources, fed by the snow melting from Mt. Fuji and more. It was apparently safe to drink (we didn’t try) – and there were beautiful ponds with Koi as well.
Again, there were so many people here. So many tour busses and it was impossible to not notice that the overwhelming majority of the tourists were people speaking Mandarin.
There were a couple restaurants and eateries that were available, but the pricing was ridiculous (Sydney restaurant prices for very small plates of what looked like food I’d make back in university). So we opted to grab some snacks to power us on to dinner from the nearby Lawson.
(what it’s actually called)
Filled bellies, and a little stressed from the insane crowds of this place – we headed back to the bus a few minutes early. With so many people in the way, I can only imagine how frustrated the locals are. Multiple times a car had to move through the main street and hundreds of people had to move out of the way, same with the small farm workers nearby having to see all of us plaguing the area of their beautiful village, it made me feel a little bit self conscious.
I hope they continue to have and enjoy their beautiful region, and tourism doesn’t ruin the area.
We moved on to our next destination, and honestly we were pretty tired at this point. Meet up was at 7am, so it was an early start, and we’d done a lot of walking around!
Arakurayama Sengen Park
We actually stopped by a shrine, and observation deck here – and again, it was in a residential area. I couldn’t help but feel we were really intruding.
Annie and I were pretty tired and really just wanted to go to the bathroom, so we made the climb to the first level – and BOY it was a steep climb. Exhausting!
We were also greeted by the most horrifyingly dirty toilets we’d ever experienced in Japan, hands down, without question.
We were buggered, and I ended up not actually taking any photos of Mt. Fuji from the shrine’s view. I did however, take a photo of the Shrine. I’m not particularly religious, but I am spiritual, and didn’t want to do what I felt might intrude on what people might feel about this place. So I took a quick snap from a distance, and we went back to the bus to wait in the warmth (at this point it was VERY chilly in the wind, and I think Annie might’ve chilled herself and caught a cold 🙁 ).
Finally, it was time to head back to Tokyo – it was becoming late evening, and I think everyone on the bus was snoozing quite a bit 🙂
Back to Tokyo (Tokyo Station)
Once we got back, it was a pretty lovely evening view of Tokyo Station – admittedly it was SUPER COLD (about 3°C) – and we were hurrying around looking for something to eat.
A Journaling Shop!
On the way, we found the Traveler’s Factory Station store in Tokyo Station; and it was amazing! I spent so much money there, picking up just about everything to explore the product line. I’m very much into journaling (particularly bullet journaling, and logging my life like with this blog! 😂)
It’s a fairly recent hobby and only started around Christmas time in 2020. Although to some varying degree, I have been blogging on this site in one incarnation or another since 2016. And earlier than that well… it’s all lost to the void. I’m trying to piece together things from earlier, but really it’s a project that’ll be ranted about in another post for another time 🙂
I was a bit absent minded from exhaustion at this point in the day, and forgot to take photos of the cute little store itself, and only managed to snap a couple shots of products (despite buying nearly the entire store).
I ended up spending something close to $380 AUD on stuff from Traveler’s Factory.
Dinner: Kamukura Ramen
We stopped by Kamukura Ramen – finally ticking off something the list that I wanted to show Annie 🙂 it’s a favourite amongst the Only Snacks gang – so it was great to try it out in Tokyo station, the seating was comfortable and the food was soothing. 8.5/10
We were pretty buggered, and the winter chill had finally started to get to us, so that was the end of Day 4, we headed on back to the hotel for a big rest 🙂