Fuji-san from our
hotel roof...After sleeping 12 hours I felt a bit better when I woke up on the 19th of July. It was a beautiful morning and I wanted to take some photographs. It had been pretty hazy when we arrived at our hotel the day before so I didn't try to photograph Fuji-san (Mt. Fuji). Now was my chance. I went up to the roof of our hotel and took the following pictures. Believe it or not, Fuji-san was *much* more visible to the naked eye than it appears the the photo below. I was even using a neutral density filter to reduce the haze, but Fuji-san is barely visible. I guess summer is not the best time to photograph Fuji-san.
Fuji-san from our
hotel roof...
I also took a few photographs of Kawaguchiko.
Haze on the
water, looking east...
Mountains on the
north shore...
Wide angle shot
looking northwest...
Soon after taking my photos, it was time to board the bus for a trip through the "fruit basket" of Japan--the Kofu valley. Our first stop was a peach orchard where we could pick and eat all the unripe peaches we wanted for 30 minutes. Okay, some of the peaches were ripe but not the ones I ate. The next stop was a do-it-yourself soba restaurant. Soba is a noodle made from buckwheat flour and cut very thin. We got to roll the flour and cut our own noodles (very poorly, I might add). It's very difficult to cut the noodles thin consistently. The ladies who were our instructors were very skilled--they made us look very bad. But everyone had fun and we got to eat our own noodles at the end along with some vegatable tempura.
Mmm, mmm, good?
[photographer unknown]
I'm supervising
(actually I'm trying to avoid ruining everyone else's hard
work)... [photographer unknown]
Luckily I don't
have to cut soba noodles for a living... [photographer unknown]
After lunch at the soba restaurant we went to Kofu. Here people could get off the bus and get transportation to the base of Fuji-san in order to climb the mountain. Before coming to Japan I was absolutely convinced that I would climb Fuji-san. Now I wasn't so sure. For one thing, my feet were sore from too much walking in Tokyo. The prospect of an eight hour climb wasn't too appealing, especially in sneakers (I had not brought my hiking boots to Japan because my robot took up too much space). For another thing, Fuji-san is traditionally ascended at night so that one can be at the summit to see the rising sun. That meant a guaranteed night without sleep. Sure, I had just gotten12 hours of sleep the night before, but I really wasn't sure I wanted to push myself that far. Furthermore, on the weekends Fuji-san is packed with people--it's shoulder-to-shoulder all the way up. That scenario wasn't very inviting. It was a close call, but in the end I decided not to do it. Looking back on it I think I made the right decision, but everyone who did the climb said it was worth it. Maybe someday I'll get another chance.
Even though I had decided not to climb Fuji-san, I was considering doing some hiking in the Kofu area. Part of Chichibu-Tama National Park is only a few miles from Kofu, specifically Mitake Shosenkyo Ravine which is supposedly very beautiful. My plan was to find a place to stay in Kofu, visit the ravine on Sunday, and then take the train back to Tokyo Sunday evening. The only think that concerned me was the availability of a hotel room. It was the height of the summer season and I wasn't sure I could get a room. The only way to find out was to try it but I really didn't want to be stuck in Kofu without a room with the bus long gone. Sure, I could have taken the train but I didn't know the schedule at that point so I thought it was a bit risky. I suppose I should have been a bit more adventurous, but I figured that there was a lot to see in Tokyo and I had a room there. So it was back to Tokyo for me.
The bus ride back to Tokyo was better then the previous day's ride to Kawaguchico. Our tour guide apparently had decided that her narration duties were over, so she didn't talk on the bus. Also, someone asked the driver if we could watch the Nagoya basho (sumo tourament) on the television and so he turned it on. It was the last day of the tourament, and I wanted to see the final match between Takonohana and Akibono. Getting to see some of the bouts made the bus ride seem shorter and I'd had just about enough bus riding for one weekend. Soon we were back in Tokyo.