Day 3 in Tokyo began with another 3:30AM wake-up call. [Not intentional. Thank you jet lag!]

I blogged a bit, worked a little, but mostly, I counted down the minutes until it was time for breakfast. Story of my life.

After breakfast, a bus came to pick us up from the hotel to take us on a tour of Mount Fuji. It took about an hour to gather up all the other passengers and then we got dropped off at the bus station. Only to board another bus with our actual tour guide.

But the morning bus transfer was worth it because we got paired with our wonderful guide, Mokoto. His sense of humor really made the traffic up the mountain a lot more bearable.

And boy was there a lot of traffic. We ended up sitting behind a number of buses as we “patiently” waited until it was our turn to enter the parking lot. After about an hour and a half of waiting, Mokoto let us walk the quarter of a mile up to the parking lot/viewpoint.

At this point, I was really excited to 1) be out of the bus, 2) play in the snow, and 3) be above the clouds. All of those things resulted in some skipping and hopping and jumping around. Which then resulted in me falling in a ditch. Literally. I’ve got a pretty gnarly cut/bruise on my knee to show for it. 

  But we were above the clouds. I just couldn’t contain my excitement.

Luckily, I was able to contain it long enough to make it down the mountain. For lunch, we had traditional Japanese cuisine with this view.

And I was a terrible human and lied about being a vegetarian so I would be able to eat something other than rice and soy sauce.

  Sister doesn’t worry too much about eating. Because she likes to invest all her calories in ice cream. (She did this in Turkey as well).

After enjoying the view and our ice cream cones, we got back on the bus to head to Hakone where we would be taking a cruise ship on Lake Ashi to see some hot springs!

  

It was pretty cold and windy so we were grateful the “cruise” part was only 15 minutes long.

Once on land, we went up the Hakone Ropeway, but weren’t able to see much because of the clouds. So we basically took the tram up the mountain, only to come back down on the same one.

They took a picture of us before we got on the tram and my mom said “thanks, but no thanks” when they tried to sell it to us on our way out. But I threw an adult temper tantrum and we ended up buying it.

After our tram adventures, the bus dropped us off to the train station where we took the bullet train (200 mph!) back to Tokyo Station. My dad couldn’t stop staring out the window because he’s in love with trains. I, on the other hand, had to stare straight ahead because when things are flying by your face at 200 mph, you start to feel nauseous.

Despite spending most of our day in a bus and falling into a ditch, Day #3 was better than the day before. Probably because I got to be on a mountain. Mountains win over cities. Always.

Konichiwa!

Question of the Day:

• Do you prefer mountains or cities?