The day (30.12.06) arrived for our much awaited trip to Japan’s highest mountain and only active volcano, Mt Fuji.

An early start was made more stressful when, despite allowing more than enough time to get to the bus, we almost missed it after going the wrong way on the subway!

Once safely on the bus it took just over an hour to reach the bottom of the mountain where there was a tourist information centre and a good spot for taking photos.

Then we began our assent to the fifth station, which stands 2300 meters above sea level and is over half way up the 3776 meter volcano. Normally you can’t get this high during the winter but the uncharacteristically warm weather had made the road safe to drive up.

The fifth station was located well within the snow cap of Fuji and was very cold. Unlike normal snow it had frozen solid, so whilst it looked like snow it had the consistency of ice. And thanks to the deceptive surface I successfully managed to fall on my arse twice in less then 20 minutes!

The views from the fifth station were spectacular, you could see all the way to the snow capped tops of the Japanese alps. I’m sure the pictures don’t do the views justice.

Once we had enjoyed the view and had a looked around the gift shop we headed back down to the bottom for lunch, which was provided as part of the trip.

Next it was on to Hakone national park where we took a boat across Lake Ashi. Ashi was formed after Fuji’s last eruption 3000 years ago and is situated in one of the most thermally active areas of the region. There are many site seeing boats on the lake and the top deck of ours offered 360 degree panamoric views of the beautiful scenery around the lake.

We disembarked our site seeing boat at its first stop which was at the bottom of the Komagatake ropeway. Mt Komagatake is the central volcanic cone of the Hakone mountain rage and stands 1,327 meters above sea level. The ropeway and the top of the mountain offer some fantastic views of both Fuji and Lake Ashi below. We were lucky enough to be at top of Mt Komagatake as the sun set.

After a day of taking in the scenery we went to the station to catch the bullet train or Shinkansen back to Tokyo.

Whilst we stood on the station a few zipped fast, they were sooo fast and very long , they can reach speeds of approximately 186 mph! The video below doesn’t do the speed justice.

From the outside the Shinkansens looked quite impressive but once you were sat on the train it was just like being on any other train!

Bullet train
The front of a Shinkansen.

* Posted by j150vsc on 20/01/2007.