Kawaguchiko/Mt. Fuji area tour!

Well, first I'll mention that after getting back from Osaka by shinkansen I dropped my bags at home and then went back out to the Chabashira bounenkai (year-end party). It was fun. The most memorable things that come to mind are that Sho Hayashi came (I can't remember ever seeing him at Chabashira events, so it was a very nice surprise), Akabane got a surprise birthday celebration in the middle of it, complete with getting pied in the face, Sho and I might have (but probably didn't, I suppose) eaten some unidentified seafood in the bottom of pretty glasses of soda we were given, and Joon Woo won two cans of "Extreme" pickle-flavored Pringles in Bingo (I won some Rirakkuma snacks, which were not extreme). Neither I nor Joon Woo nor Sarah went to the nijikai, since we were to be traveling in the morning.

And so, the next morning we gathered in front of the Common Hall, myself, Joon Woo (aka Kuma(-san)), Alden, Wu Di, Yang Rei, and Clara. I was surprised to see Sarah there, since she was going to meet us at Kichijouji, but she apparently hadn't slept, and since she had a little extra time when she was done with all she had to do, decided to meet us at the dorm. I'm always find people who can just decide not to sleep for one night kind of amazing and very mysterious. Certain not something I can pull off without a full day (or two) of recovery.
We got on the bus, bought our train tickets (which also gave us free transport around Kawaguchiko on the bus), ate at McDonald's, and finally got on our train, last stop Ootsuki. It was pretty uncrowded (we all got seats easily) when we got on, and by the time we got off to transfer there were, in our whole car, our group, two older women and a a young couple. This in the morning, albeit after rush hour, on a Monday. Ootsuki is a long way from Kichijouji.
In the hour an a half on the train, the scenery completely changed. Unlike going to Osaka, which was another big Japanese city but with a somewhat different flavor, as we went more and more into the mountains past little towns nestled in little valleys and reached a point where the train doors didn't even open automatically at each stop, but required the press of a button, it really felt like we'd reached another world from Tokyo.
We took one more train, proportioned painfully small and decorated very colorfully with Thomas the Tank Engine (what?), from the window of which I saw Mt. Fuji with my own eyes for the first time(!). And finally, we arrived Kawaguchiko station. It was so bright and air was so clean, and right there from the station was a stunning view of Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji, being the tallest mountain in Japan, is often not visible if there are clouds, but we were lucky, and the sky was completely clear. Even what I thought at first was some strange white wispy cloud clinging to the peak I soon realized was just snow blowing off of it.

We ate the specialty udon of a neat restaurant near the station that Joon Woo had seen recommended in travel guides, and then took the bus to a little building from where our guided tour of the forest began.
Around the base of Mt. Fuji is a very (in)famous forest called the "sea of trees." As the name suggests, it's very large. It's particularly famous as a frightening place. Compasses don't work, because on the magnetic rock, and it's impossible to walk in a straight line because the surface of the ground is so convoluted. Before coming to Japan I knew of it mostly as a forest famous for people getting lost and dieing in and as a place where people go to kill themselves. As our guide explained, it's so dark inside that no plants flower and there are virtually no flying insects. Anyway, we went on a pretty short, planned route, which took about 45 minutes, with our guide explaining things in Japanese that I half-understood (Joon Woo and Sarah kindly explained the rest). The tour also included a short walk into a little cave, which was interesting. Other times of year there's apparently a much greater cave portion, but right now the bats are hibernating, so it's bad to disturb them.

Finally a van from the hotel came and picked us up, and we were taken to the hotel, far away from the town and practically everything else. The hotel was just at the base of one ridge of mountains on one side, and just in front of a lake on the other. When we got there the sun was just setting, casting red light on one side of Mt. Fuji. Before doing anything else, we jumped out of the van ran down to the water's edge and watched the light quickly disappear. It was really beautiful, and we all ran around laughing ridiculously, doing silly things. XD

I was really excited by the room, when we got to it. It was my first time in a Japanese-style inn (the hotel in Osaka was western-style), and it was just as I imagined it. The front door, followed by one sliding door, then another, then the main room. Tatami floor, kotatsu with tea set laid out, and behind a set of sliding screens on the far side of the room a small sitting area with huge windows, basically the whole wall, facing Mt. Fuji. The place really was quite perfect; we all had to thank Joon Woo, who found it.

We found in ours, the boys' room, three yukata (casual kimono) prepared for us and changed into them. We stopped by the girls' room next door, just as nice, and then went down to the onsen. This place had a very nice onsen right in the hotel, with an indoor bath (too hot), a fenced-in outdoor bath on the first floor, and an outdoor bath with a view of Mt. Fuji on the roof. The baths on the first floor we could use freely, but the one on the roof we had only a half-hour of free use with that came with the room, which we had to reserve. So, for the evening we went to the first floor outdoor one, which was quite nice. Afterward we went back to the room, goofed around a bit, then down to dinner, which was also included. And, whoa, what a dinner. Japanese food, many small dishes, all delicious, and slightly more than I could eat, though I gave it my all.

Afterward the seven of us went back to the boy's room. I was surprised to find that while we'd been at dinner, the staff had come and laid out our bedding (futons on the floor, this being all Japanese-style). We sat around the kotatsu and talked for a few hours. This included telling some scary stories to frighten the girls (minus Sarah, who told the scariest story and had nerves of steel) while eating snacks and drinking tea, Joon Woo trying to trick people into eating his pickle Pringles... XD

After another round in the onsen I slept really deeply (why can't my futon at home be nice like that?) and woke up to an alarm in the morning. We'd hoped to get some good group photos in front of Mt. Fuji with the sunrise, and so agreed with the girls to get up early. But when we looked out the window, we found that outside there were thick, low clouds, and besides not being able to see the top of the mountain, we could hardly see any of it at all. So, being us, we went back to bed while our futons were still warm (it seems that the girls stayed awake and took pictures of the still-pretty sunrise).
When our appointment in the fourth-floor bath came, we got up and went. It being just after dawn up in the mountains, it was really, really cold, so stripping down there in the semi-outdoor space before going out to the really outdoor space of the bath was awful, but then the hot, hot water, which normally feels sometimes too hot, felt fantastic. The clouds had even lifted somewhat, so that although the peak was hidden, we could see most of Mt. Fuji.

We ate breakfast, again from the hotel, again Japanese food, which was again quite good, and finally checked out. The hotel staff drove us again, this time to a bus stop where a bus was coming soon. Totally unlike Tokyo, where the bus comes every few minutes, these were once an hour or fewer. XD
We went back to town. It feels like I'm forgetting something, but as far as I can recall we then walked straight out to (actually sort of more into the town) Mt. Kachikachi, which is apparently famous in Japan as the location of a common childrens' story about a raccoon and rabbit. We took the cable car up the mountain, and enjoyed a great view of the town below, as well as of Mt. Fuji, which was still partially covered in clouds, but with its peak showing.
It's funny, it feels just slightly weird to say refer to Mt. Fuji as "it," which is ridiculous, since it's definitely an it. I was reflecting the other day on how, in Japan, so for the last three months, in speech I use almost exclusively either Japanese or "Janglish," a mix of Japanese and English, but almost never pure English. I use it (more or less) in writing online, of course, but for three months or so I've, at the least, used Japanese words in English conversation when it's easier or more convenient (for there are many words in Japanese that don't really have good, simple equivalents in English). Somewhat similarly, for many things, like Mt. Fuji, I and the people around me almost always use the Japanese, even when talking in English. In Japanese, instead of the prefix "Mount" for mountains' names, there's the suffix "-山," which is usually read/said "-san." As many people know, the most commonly used honorific suffix on people's names (sort of similar to "Mr." or "Ms." prefixes in English) is also said "-san." So, given that we're all constantly saying "Fuji-san," plus the general mystique and nature of its presence in our consciousnesses, and it's easy to get a feeling that Mt. Fuji is somehow alive. やっぱり、I kind of feel like saying "he," rather than "it."

Anyway, we came down from the mountain and tried to visit a shrine and temple on our map, but they were both closed. We then tried a teddy bear museum, but it too was closed. The problem with going on the 29th of December in Japan, I guess. Still, we had fun walking around in the sunshine, skipping stones (or at least trying), eating lunch, buying souvenirs, visiting the "Cheesecake Garden" and getting a little lost before boarding our train home. In Kichijouji we had dinner at La Pausa before heading our separate ways for the night.
All in all, a really fantastic trip. For various reasons, I enjoyed it more than the much more expensive Osaka trip, I'm afraid. In the end, I'm really much interested in things that are somehow cultural, I guess. Something like that. Experiencing new aspects of Japan that I can only experience in Japan. This was simply a much more novel and amazing trip.