Angie and Ash's Visit (Part 4)

Day 4 found us on the train heading south to Kawaguchiko, a little town in the five lakes region just north of Mt. Fuji. We had great views of Mt. Fuji on the train ride there, and we were very excited, jumping up to take crappy photos of power lines with Mt. Fuji in the background. A little sampling of those photos:



In Kawaguchiko, we dropped our bags off at the hotel, noted the view from the hotel,

and hopped on the "retro-bus" (basically a little bus intended for tourists). We went first to the cable car for a ride up a nearby mountain with great view of Mt Fuji and lots of these cartoon characters from a Japanese fairy tale. The fairy tale is called Kachi-kachi Mountain and is about an evil tanuki (those raccoon-dogs which Japanese believe can change their shape and play tricks on people). The story is rather gruesome, but interesting. Here's a translation of the story.

Mt Fuji was covered in clouds by mid-afternoon so we hired a paddle boat and toodled around the lake for a while.

View of the cable car line from the boat (you can click on any of these photos to zoom in).

We woke up the next morning to rain, but luckily we had taken lots of photos of Mt. Fuji, so we hopped on the train towards Mt. Koya, our next destination.