Don't Be Greedy - A Computer Geek's Blog: July 07 - Kamakura and [not] Climbing up Mt. Fuji

For those of you who have noticed a decay in the 'quality' of my blog entries, I've not slept too much lately... There's just so much to see... :D

Today we met someone else again. It was only for a short time, but it was really nice. We met this Japanese guy from Osaka at the bus from Kawaguchiko, where our hostel is, to Kawaguchiko fifth station, the place where people usually start to climb Mount Fuji from the side we were on. The trip itself would have been really boring if it wasn't for the conversation we had with him. Unfortunately, he wanted to stay a bit at Kawaguchiko fifth station. Thus, we took a photo with him and started our trip. When you're all the way up, it's really amazing. Or so we heard. The right way up was actually in the opposite direction of the one we took. We started walking up a small path, and soon we noticed that the slope of the path wouldn't get us too high. "Oh, what the hell, it probably gets steeper the farther you go". Well, actually it did. For some time. But then we got to a point where it started to go down again. Down. Down. It didn't seem to go up again. And actually, after a two hour walk, when we got to the end of the way, we noticed that we had gotten even lower than where we started from. We were at some point between the fourth station and the fifth station. We started walking on the road upwards and, at some point, we found a sign that said "Kawagichiko fifth station, 2000m". All right, why not. We kept walking, making a short stop to eat our great lunch. Some canned fish, which was actually the most fresh tasting canned fish I've ever tried, and a few crackers and cookies. Yeah, our budget does not really allow much.
Oh yeah, if you're asking why we didn't notice that there were no tourists there, actually there were... Ok, just a small group of Japanese with no bags (which are usually the norm, since most people who climb up Mt. Fuji stay there during the night to watch the sunrise in the next morning).

Anyway, even though we never really got to the top, the trail we walked turned out to be really amazing. Apart from being really calm (there were no other tourists!), it had extraordinary views on the landscape surrounding the northern part of Mount Fuji, including for example, Kawaguchiko. There were several spots which allowed me to take really good pictures and videos, with nothing blocking the view. The wind that was blowing made the scene even more spectacular, although it probably ruined the audio on my videos (hey, if someone is ready to fund a professional 4000$+ camera and a 1000$ microphone I'll gladly accept it). Unfortunately, at some point of the way we were surrounded by fog, so I couln't keep the filming up. But i think I already had taken enough pictures and videos to prove that it was really an incredible experience. I serously recomment anybody who's planning to come to Japan to spend a few days here.

Before comming back to the hotel, we took some time to take a few pictures in Kawaguchiko. When I booked the room at the hostel I was only thinking of this place as somewhere to spend the night in order to get to Mt. Fuji as soon as possible. This is definately not the case. This town has some spots that really catch your attention.

When we finally arrived, we took some time to rest, specially because or feet were really sore. Yeah, we went hiking with some sports shoes... We turned on the TV and, for some time, we felt like the character Bill Murray plays in "Lost in Translation" (A really good movie, if you haven't already, you should watch it), in the scene where he's in his room and, not knowing what he was about to experience, turns on TV. Seriously, japanese talk shows are... No, not weird. No, not insane either... I don't think there's a word to explain what we saw... Anyway, after searching through all the channels we found one that was broadcasting some anime. The anime itself was totally insane too, but at least that's something I'm more used to.

Afterwards we bought some ramen for dinner and bakery and coffee for tomorrows breakfast at a store, and had dinner at the hotel. We wanted to wait untill it got dark, because something told me that the sight on the town at night was impressive. And for once, I was right. We walked up the bridge that crosses the lake at Kawaguchiko and took some pictures from there. Unfortunately the camera wasn't good enough to get the silhoutette of the Mt. Fuji in the dark. But the views on the towns 'coast line' were really nice.

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The guy from Osaka we met at the bus, right after getting to Kawaguchiko fifth station