When I was planning our trip to Japan, my Mom told me she wanted to see Mt. Fuji. I did too. As such, I did a bit of research on the best places to see this world-renowned symbol of Japan and Lake Kawaguchiko seemed like the perfect place. I decided to include a day-trip to this town located 2 hours away from Tokyo in our itinerary.
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| Mt. Fuji |
The challenge of visiting Mt. Fuji is that even on a sunny day, there is no guarantee that you can see its magnificent peak. That's because it is a volcano with its own microclimate. To maximize our chances of getting to ssee the peak, my plan was to wake up early each day, check the visibility of Mt. Fuji via the livestream videos, and if skies were clear, we could go to Lake Kawaguchiko that day. (I planned our Tokyo itinerary in such a way that we had multiple days that I could switch around with each other.) On our first full day in Tokyo, the livestream at around 7am showed that Mt. Fuji was fully visible from Lake Kawaguchiko so we decided to go there immediately.
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| Mt. Fuji covered by clouds |
My plan was for us to take the bus from Shinjuku. We arrived in Shinjuku before 9am and it took us a while to figure out where the bus terminal was. Unfortunately, when we got there, we were told that the next available bus would leave at 12:15PM. That would be too late for us. We abandoned that plan and decided to take the train instead. While on the train, I checked the livestream again and unfortunately, Mt. Fuji was already hidden behind clouds. Still, the town of Fujikawaguchiko where Lake Kawaguchiko is located is beautiful so I thought it would still be a good day. I also had a couple of activities lined up so I figured this trip wouldn't be a total bust. Our train ride took about 2 hours and it was around noon when we arrived.
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| The beautiful and serene Lake Kawaguchiko |
My main plan here was for us to take the ropeway to the top of Mt. Tenjo where you can get incredible panoramic views of the town as well as a great unobstructed view of Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, when we got there, the waiting time to head up Mt. Tenjo was one hour. We felt that it was too long of a wait so we instead walked over to the lake shore and got tickets to the sightseeing boat instead.
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| Lake Kawaguchiko Sightseeing Boat |
The boat ride over the lake lasts 20 minutes. It was a relaxing experiencing, and while Mt. Fuji remained shrouded, the cloud formations were glorious and it was still quite impressive to see this iconic volcano.
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| Spectacular cloud formations over Mt. Fuji |
We tried to go back to the ropeway after our boatride but the waiting time was still an hour. We also ran into a few more problems in the afternoon that prevented us from maximizing our short stint in this beautiful town, including the discovery that all modes of transportation heading back to Tokyo were fully booked! (I was actually advised when buying tickets in Tokyo that I needed to buy return tickets upon arrival in Kawaguchiko because they sell out pretty quickly but I forgot to do that because of all the chaos of figuring out how to get to Lake Kawaguchiko.) I was told that we could get tickets for the next departing train but we wouldn't have any seats. It was a 2-hour ride, which was quite a long time to be standing after a long day, but there didn't seem to be any other feasible option so my family decided to take the tickets. We ended up just sitting on the floor or leaning against the walls of the sections between train cars.
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| The peak of Mt. Fuji starting to become visible |
It was on this train ride back to Tokyo that we finally got to have an unobstructed view of the peak of Mt. Fuji! Better late than never, as they say. Thankfully, I was still able to take relatively good photos even from behind the window of a moving train.
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| Mt. Fuji as seen from our train back to Tokyo |
It was a long day with many ups and downs, and it was probably our most stress-filled day in our entire Japan trip. Thankfully, things got better for us in the remainder of our trip. And I'm also thankful we got to see and take photos of Mt. Fuji.
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