Mt. Fuji!

Today I took a day trip to Mt. Fuji and the nearby town of Hakone. I was really excited for this, because the last time I was at Mt. Fuji, there was zero visibility. It was so misty that I saw the mountain only when I was standing on it and staring at my feet. This time, the visibility was almost perfect! Being so flat in Ohio, mountains always amaze me. I forgot how big Mt. Fuji was, too. You could see it everywhere. Even in Hakone, a town that was an hour's drive away, it still looked as big as if you were at its base. 

I first took a bus up to Mt. Fuji's Fifth station, about halfway up the mountain. The one disappointing thing about the day was that we were hardly given any time to enjoy the mountain and the view. We got only 30 minutes on Fifth station, mostly taken up with frantic photo-taking, but I did make time to buy a post card and send it to my family stamped from Mt. Fuji! 

We stopped for lunch and then drove to Hakone, where we took a cable car up a nearby mountain. On the cable car and on top of the mountain, we had an incredible view of Mt. Fuji! The area around it is beautiful too- lots of green mountains and a winding lake. We took a brief cruise across the lake, where we surprisingly didn't see much of Mt. Fuji, but the surrounding area was also very beautiful! 

I took a train back to Tokyo and still had the whole evening left (I could have spent so much more time on the mountain!) I went to Ikebukuro, another district in Tokyo, to have dinner. I finally had good shabu shabu! We had unlimited meat, vegetables, rice, and even ice cream for desert! Definitely a place to go back to again!

It also happened to be right next to a karaoke place, so I karaoke'd for about an hour. I love Asian style karaoke- definitely one of my favorite activities! Finally, I stopped at the arcade (Round One Stadium- the same one we found in Osaka) and played my favorite Taiko drumming game before heading back to the hotel.