Japan 5.6: Mount Fuji and a New Years celebration at Zojo-ji

   The last portion of my journey had me staying at Fujiyoshida, near the base of Mount fuji.  In order to get there, I had to take subway lines to Kyoto Station and then take one Shinkansen bullet train and then 3 more trains.  

  The journey started off with a hiccup, as the subway line right near my hotel showed up as "cancelled."  Every train on that line had the same label.  Luckily, a five minute walk down the street led to another line that would take me to the station.  I was lucky that I had decided to build in extra time and left a bit early.  The day went by pretty smoothly after that, despite having one connection with only a seven minute transfer time.  The final train was a very slow moving local train.  It included a section that ended at a station and had us reverse, but going in a different direction.

  After the five and a half hours of travel, I arrived at the final station.  I went to the taxi area, but there were no taxis there.  Unfortunately, Uber only works in Tokyo, and the only other taxi app that worked in this area, only allowed people that lived in the country to register.  I walked the fifteen minutes to the hotel.  While on the train, I passed Mount Fuji on the south side.  It was at this point that I realized that I had had the location of Fuji all wrong when researching the location.  The lakes near Fujiyoshida are popular for views of Mount Fuji.  I, for some reason, thought the mountain was north, on the opposite side of the lake from my hotel.  It was actually south.  I had intended to take photos with the lakes as the foreground.  This could no longer be the case, unless I went on a boat.

I paid for a view of Fuji.

  That night, I walked to a local ramen joint, but it was not open, despite Google's insistence that it was.  Just across the street was a hoto restaurant.  I had never heard of this soup before, as it is a regional food from Yamanashi Prefecture.  It was a huge bowl, and the broth tasted almost similar to chicken soup.  The noodles were huge and wide, and did not really absorb the soup.  It was filled with vegetables, including mushrooms.  The only vegetable included that I did not like was kabocha squash.  I also ordered my first and only tempura of the trip.  Their tempura was vegetables, with a limit of only one shrimp.  I had it without the shrimp.

  I took the next day off, and relaxed in my hotel room, with a trip out for ramen at night.  This time, I tried another restaurant, but it was also completely dark inside, despite Google's insistence otherwise.  Luckily, there was another restaurant within walking distance, albeit poorly rated.  I thought that it was quite decent though.

The view from breakfast.

  Paying for a room with a view of Mount Fuji was very much worth it.  My room had very large windows, but it also had a huge Japanese style screen that blocked literally half of the window.  The first thing that I did was remove it and put it along the wall, where it stayed until check out time.

  Fuji tends to have clear skies in the winter, and tons of clouds in the warmer months.  There were very, very few clouds for the first 3 days here.  With the window view, I could open the window to take pictures whenever clouds did indeed show up.

On the second day after my arrive, I decided to walk to the local ropeway, up to Kawaguchiko Tenjozan Park, which had views of the surrounding towns and Fuji.  They sold a combo ticket with a twenty minute sightseeing boat ride.  I had arrived just as the boat was taking off, so I went up the ropeway first.  I closed my eyes.

  The mountaintop had a small restaurant and up an incline, it had swings, which had a photographer that charged for pictures with the view of Fuji behind it.  A little walk upward led to a metal structured viewpoint.  I chose to take the five to ten minute walk to the top of the mountain.  The view there was really no different.

You were able to clearly see Fuji-Q Highland amusement park.

  Rather than take the ropeway down, I decided to take the hike downwards, which eventually led to a clearing with some nice views.  Unfortunately, there were no clouds in the sky.

  Once at the bottom, I was able to catch the final boat outing of the early evening, just in time to see the sunset.

  I took the next day off again.  The following day was my final full day in town.  I walked to the train station and stopped below Arakurayama Sengen Park.  It was a short walk up a few hundred steps.  Rather than continue up the final set of stairs, I detoured to a side area that had a few paths lined with trees and fences.  The place was pretty much deserted, as everyone else walked straight up to the pagoda view.  This path allowed me to walk to the side, with differing views of Fuji.

  I walked up the side, but rather than going all the way to the pagoda, I noticed that there was a path continuing upwards.  I did a quick check on the Alltrails app, and this path led all around the mountains, ending at the top of the ropeway from the other day, but it also suggested just hiking to the top of the mountain.  It was only a little past 2:00, and I wanted to stay in the area until closer to sunset, so I decided to do it.  It was about an hour hike, mostly upward.  Unfortunately, the trees obscured the view.  Once I reached the top, I turned around and walked down.

  I took photos of the pagoda and view until the sun was blocked by mountains and trees.  Then I went back to the hotel room.  I had eaten at the ramen restaurant every other night, so this night I decided to return to the hoto restaurant.  Unfortunately, even though there were people inside, they were closed for dinner, as New Years was quickly approaching, and a lot of Japan shuts down for a few days surrounding it.  I returned to the ramen restaurant.

  It was a two and a half hour train ride, via three trains, to my hotel near Tokyo Main Station.

There was an advertisement for the Thomas the Train amusement park.

  I hadn't eaten all day.  I wanted to return to my favorite ramen restaurant of the trip, Hakodate Ramen Funamizaka.  The place was closed.  I looked for nearby places and tried three more shops, all closed.  As a last resort, I decided to go towards Tokyo Main Station.  There is a "Ramen Street" there, in the underground mall below the station.  Here are some of the buildings I passed.

I turned around and noticed this Konami building, which was a recognizable name of a game developer.  Once home, I looked it up, and sure enough, this is their headquarters. 

  Ramen Street had queues around the corner.  I chose the shortest line, which coincided with the worst reviews, and ate there.  By this time, I was quite hungry, and so I didn't care to be discriminating.

  For New Years, I left around 8:30 at night, to walk around town.  I returned to Roppongi, where the streets were mostly barren.  The previously packed street crossing at Keyakizaka Dori, had very few people walking it, but they were all kind of being silly, while also stopping for photos.  One thing that I noticed, on both the streets, along with the subways, was that the amount of foreigners out and about were in much higher ratios than I had seen at any other point of the trip.

  For the countdown to New Years, I visited the Zojo-ji temple complex, which included a view of Tokyo Tower(Where I brought Miles in 2017 to visit the One Piece Amusement Park).  Below, I included a video of the countdown.  I picked a temple for New Years, because online searches explained that people line up to experience the first prayer of the new year.  Also, they would ring a bell 108 times, to represent the 108 worldly desires.  I had erroneously expected a quick succession of ringing.  I think that they actually sold tickets though, and so there was a large gap between ringings.  I included a video of this below as well.  The final video is of a small both where people were playing music.

  The complex was booming with excitement.  There were food vendors, the beforementioned music, a large fire pit, and even people wearing boy scoutlike outfits.  Unfortunately, with the last two, I couldn't really ask what they were about.  While I can ask, in Japanese, what something is, I cannot understand their response.

  One of the two temples was open to all visitors.  Once the line was opened for the main temple, all were allowed inside there as well.

  It was reported that Tokyo Tower would be lit, but it was dormant at midnight.  All of a sudden, at 1:00 AM, it turned on.  

  The next day was a bit of a downer, after such an exhilarating experience at night.  I took the high speed Narita Express train to Narita Airport, way out East of Tokyo.  There was a massive outdoor area, which allowed you to hang out and even eat outdoors.  I sat there in the sun.  It was warm enough that I did not need a jacket.

  The trip had a very different feel than any of my previous trips, to Japan or elsewhere.  I rarely stay in a location for an entire week, and so the pacing was different.  I also began to really become comfortable with navigating the cities and navigational systems in each.  I also gave some thought as to what it would be like to stay in Japan for a much more extended period of time. 

  While I absolutely love staying in remote locations and smaller towns, even Fujiyoshida, which was fairly big, was just too isolating to me.  Throughout the trip, I was able to participate in a travel chat group.  It allowed me to meet Jimmy, ask questions to other people, as well as feeling like part of a community.  Almost all of the activity took place in Tokyo.  So, it seems, that if I wanted to take part in an expat community, Tokyo would be the place to be.  I would take lessons and try to immerse myself in the Japanese language if I were to take an extended stay in Japan.  That being said, having at least a handful of English speaking people to interact with, would definitely help, at least in the beginning.

  Kyoto will always be a special place to me, as it is a nice mix of small town and city life, with access to tons of hiking, and mass transit to varied locales.  The negatives are that the transportation inside the town itself is much more sparse.  This was my first time in Osaka, and I didn't get to experience much, but the crowds, both inside the main station, as well as on the streets, seemed much denser and overwhelming than Tokyo.  This might have had to do with the fact that I chose to go to Christmas lighting events though.  I ended up really loving Tokyo, despite it being a concrete megacity.  Everything is easily reached via an abundant and efficient transportation system.  The subways are also extremely economical.  Yet, despite the population, you can find a seemingly endless amount of hole in the wall restaurants and I assume, bars, that have jus ta handful of seats.  It is nice to be able to get away from the bustle and have more intimate gathering places.