Sep 2018 holiday - Mt Fuji

We'd heard from many people that one has to be very lucky to be able to see Mt Fuji, from anywhere. We were hopeful anyway, when we booked (1 month ahead) this day trip from klook.com. it's supposed to bring us all the way to Mt Fuji 5th station, with a few stops on the way:

- fruit picking and eating at Yamanashi Prefecture Sightseeing Orchard

- Kawaguchi Lakeside Park to see flowers

- lunch at Lakeside Restaurant

- Mt Kachi Kachi Ropeway

- Mt Fuji 5th station

Of course, we didn't expect there to be a typhoon sweeping across Japan during the first few days we were there. So the Mt Fuji trip turned out to be quite a washout. Our tour guide tried her best to enable us to see Mt Fuji by swapping the program around. We tried to go up to the 5th station first, while the weather was still friendly. But turned out, the roads were closed. So we ended up at the Mt Fuji Museum instead.

Then we took the cable car up to Mt Kachi Kachi Ropeway. 

This was the view we got:

We tried to make the most out of it ...

At one point, the clouds started to shift very quickly, revealing a bit of sun, and the colors of the towns below the mountain. We thought perhaps the sky will clear up and we could go up to the 5th station.

Unfortunately, that hope was short-lived. Dark clouds started coming in again, and the drizzle became heavy drops of rain.

We then went for lunch at the Lakeside Restaurant. We were served Houtou noodles, famous udon of the Yamanashi Prefecture. Was a bit like ban mian.

Next was fruit picking. Again, because of the typhoon, we couldn't go out to pick fruits. Instead, the orchard prepared loads of grapes for us to eat - as much as we could.

Final destination was the Kawaguchi Lakeside Park. That's probably a very pretty place, if the weather was good. Not so nice when we had to walk in the rain, with strong winds blowing!

  

The wind was so strong that it destroyed Aaron's umbrella!

So that was our Mt Fuji day trip. Better luck next time, hopefully.

We rounded off the evening by going to Shibuya, for more sneaker shopping! The winds were so strong, we felt we were going to be blown off at times!

It was quite an experience to be out there in the typhoon. But when we got back to the hotel, we saw on the news that what we'd experienced was really very mild. The typhoon in Osaka that day was so fierce that it caused massive destructions all over, and the Kansai airport had to be shut down because an ocean tanker hit and damaged the bridge that connects the airport to the mainland. We thank God that we were in Tokyo and not Osaka!