Kawaguchiko

Best during the autumn, the leaves are amazing around the lake. Stay in a ryokan and jump in the onsen, it’s the only way to go despite the cost. If you go by car, check out Aokigahara, the creepy suicide forest near the base of Fuji… the molten floor of the forest is pretty cool, and it is a little eerie.

We embarked on a hike at Kawaguchiko near the base of Mt. Fuji. As usual, it took us far longer than I think it really should to get ourselves organized. Then it was 40 minutes to wait for the bus.

We got off the bus and walked to a trailhead. The whole point of us going to this particular trail head was so we could shorten up the original hike we had planned to take. Unfortunately, what we didn’t realize was that making it shorter actually made it steeper. It was a very strenuous climb on a mountain ridge. Rose and Emma were tremendous troopers, especially considering that Emma declared at the outset that she didn’t want to do any elevation gain.

When we made it to the top, there was an overlook tower, but the beautiful views that we should have had were obscurred by clouds and haze. We never saw Mt. Fuji that should have been towering over us.

On the way down, we were doing just fine, me decoding the signs, but we got to a crossroads, and none of the characters corresponded to anything I had on the map. We took the more well-established trail, but unfortunately, this was the wrong leg. No harm done; by the time we reached the bottom, we realized our error and located ourselves on the map.

As we walked along, an older teenaged boy was looking out of his window, and came out to help us find our way to the bus stop. Gathering his courage, he attempted to speak to us in English, and actually did a reasonable job at it. When he left us at the stop, I gave him one of my clif bars as an American hiking snack, in thank you.

After returning to the hostel (and after a deserved nap on my part) and showers all around, we walked to a restaurant that served wide, thick, regional noodles dishes. We had excellent bowls of noodles: David and I had the wild duck, Emma the mushroom, and Rose the sea-eel. While Emma was poking around her bowl, she came upon a drowned caterpiller. She laid it upon her lacquer tray.

After our meal, after asking for the check, I said to the waitress (in Japanese), “We are unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine [not a total truth, but in politeness], and we were wondering, was this something we were to eat?” She gave a horrified gasp, and ran away with the lacquer tray. Then the chef came out, and pressed his forehead to the tatami, and repeatedly apologized. We reassured him that the food was delicious, that we enjoyed it thoroughly, and that it was OK (in both languages, even if he didn’t understand the words, I hope he could understand the spirit in which it was given). They then deducted the cost of Emma’s noodles from the bill,
which was fine.