It’s a whole thing, apparently.<\/a> There was a queue of people with cameras on one side the road, and their friends\/partners on the other side, in front of the Lawson store. Everyone was queueing quite politely, but clearly the whole thing has been causing enough disruption to traffic that there were barriers in place to keep the photographers from wandering into the street, and even a security guard to keep an eye on the whole thing.<\/p>\n![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Better views of Mount Fuji can be had from a hill nearby. We took the cable car to the viewing site near the top of the hill and got pretty stunning views. It really is quite majestically large.<\/p>\n
When we were planning the trip and Mt Fuji came up, my first instinct was that we should climb it. It’s a mountain, it’s there, of course we want to go to the top. Unfortunately quite undoable: firstly, it would take three days, and secondly, now is not a good time of the year. When we were here in the +5°C weather, the weather app said it was –29°C at the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
There was a hiking path to the top of the hill (and onwards to other hills and mountains) where we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. The viewing platforms weren’t too badly crowded, either, even though it’s a Saturday, but up there was even better.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_5.jpg\")
\n![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_4.jpg\")
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![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_6.jpg\")
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Snack break at the top of the hill. No benches anywhere, of course.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_7.jpg\")
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Fujikamaguchiko is a nice little town, with a lake, and pretty temples and shrines here and there. our focus was all on the mountain, though. When we got down from the cable car hill, we walked to Arakurayama temple on another hill for more views.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_8.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The walk wasn’t too long but turned out to be not at all pleasant. Much of it went along a large, noisy road. The pavement was very narrow; we couldn’t even walk side by side. Ingrid’s shoes hurt her feet, and of course there was nowhere to take a break. We regretted not having rented bikes.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_9.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
And then there were stairs. Ingrid’s feet and knees were not happy.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_10.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
This place was a lot more crowded. Most of the people stayed right at the top of the stairs; walking a bit further up got us away from them. <\/p>\n
I’m glad we came here in the low season. I can’t even imagine how crowded it must be here in April, or in the summer.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_11.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The views from up here were pretty stunning, but now the side of the mountain facing us was all in the shade, and the top of it enveloped in clouds.<\/p>\n
Since our itinerary was very flexible, we picked the day for coming here based on the weather forecast. Ingrid told me that Mount Fuji is only visible on about 70 to 80 days in a year – that’s just one day out of every five. The rest of the time it’s hidden by clouds or rain.<\/p>\n
We hung out here for a while and waited for the clouds to drift past the peak.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_12.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Our legs were quite tired by the end of the day.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_13.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_14.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A visit to Japan would not be complete without seeing Mount Fuji. It takes under two hours to get to Fujikamaguchiko from Tokyo by express bus. Mount Fuji is visible well before the final stop. You don’t have to walk far from the bus station to get a view of the mountain. For some reason, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,800,768,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-ingrid_johanna","category-japan","category-photography-2","category-travels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21866"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22137,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21866\/revisions\/22137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3986_Fuji_1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n