Japan Tokyo Mt Fugi and then Home

Saturday, October 11, 2008

For our last full day in Japan we took the "Slow Train" out to a small town at the base of Mt Fuji. The "slow train" was a local train, which meant it stopped at every stop on the way, it took 3 hours on the train to get there and only 45 minutes on the highway bus back.

The view from where we had lunch - a great place to picnic

The view of the lake from on the Tram CarWe had lunch on the shore of the lake, and then we decided to take the tram car up the side of a mountain across the valley from Mt. Fuji . This is where we got some great views of Mt. Fuji, we even could see the top (supposedly this is a "shy" mountain like Mt. Robson, where the top is always hidden in the clouds).

Our first view of Mt. Fuji

Scott and I, with Mt. Fuji in the background (too bad you can't see the mountain very well)

Sunday, October 12, 2008

We flew out of Tokyo on Sunday at 7:00 pm - after a 10 hour flight, a 5 hour layover in Vancouver, a flight to Cranbrook and an hour & a bit drive home we arrived approximately 1 hour after we left Tokyo - gotta love a 16 hour time change. It was literally the longest day of our lives, we got to re-live almost a whole day.

Our last bit of time in Tokyo we spent on foot, as our Japan Rail pass ran out. We walked from our hotel (after checking out and getting them to hold our packs) to "Music Town". We did a lot of window shopping. We also found an area of stores totally dedicated to sports - mostly skiing/snowboarding, this is where we spent a lot of time. There was store after store, after store (multiple floors high) of ski pants, jackets, clothes, boots, skis, snowboards, snowshoes, touring gear.... you name it they had it.

After spending hours shopping, we walked back to our hotel to pick up our packs and hop on a train to Narita Airport, to catch our plane home.