Fuji-san

After Fuji I headed to Kawakuchi-ko City, the city where hard core climbers go to take the bus to the first station on the track to climb this mountain affectionately called "Fuji-san". I took the Shinkansen and shot right into the Mishima stop. Got off the train and jumped aboard a bus. Now, normally it takes 2 hours and one transfer to get to Kawakuchi-ko City from the Mishima stop. But in this case it took 3 hours, because it started to snow very hard and the bus needed chains and traffic was very bad, and so on...

But finally I arrived. I asked the woman a the bus station counter to call the hostel for a pickup, since the bus arrived so late. A guy came up behind me and said: "are you going to K's house?" and I was. He said he'd just called them. Later I found out that that was "K" himself. (K's House is a small group of hostels in Japan.)

The room was comfy as always.


The next morning I woke up and took a walk on to the bridge to see "Fuji San" and I did. It's really an amazing mountain with your bare eyes. A little doggie followed me around while I chased the views. I took a cable car up to the top of a much smaller mountain nearby to get some really close up shots and got the newest photos in Flickr. Click on the "Japan Photos" on the right to see them all. I also found traces of other hikers; this snowman was still fresh.