The Great Outdoors

We're coming up on the end of our project which means a lot more overtime and a lot less fun. For our last full weekend we went out with a bang (and a lot of pictures)!

Takao

Saturday we headed inland to Mt. Takao near the town of Sagamiko and went for a hike. There are multiple trails leading up the mountain so we were able to take a different way down. On the way up we passed statues of buddahs, a cave, and a shrine with a small waterfall. I believe monks sit at the bottom of this thin falls to meditate. 

The summit was large and flat and the day was cloudy but you could still see Tokyo's mass of skyscrapers in the distance.

On the way back down we crossed this suspension bridge and a scary monkey statue...

With some extra time we decided to stop at a trick art museum outside of the train station before continuing on. It's the best museum we've been to in Japan! I promise everything you see in these pictures is just paint. Some of them were really good.

A lot of crazy fun was had. With darkness setting in we headed off to Sagamiko to see the huge Sagamiko Illumination. It's one of the biggest ones in Japan with 5 million bulbs and wow was it impressive!! They turned all the lights on at once and I was amazed.

Fuji Five Lakes

We spent the night in Fujiyoshida, a town at the base of Mt. Fuji. Since we got in at night we didn't know how close we were but the next morning it was like bam volcano in your face! This was the view from my room. I was excited to get the day going!

We started by going to the Chureito Pagado so I could get that one photo of Japan that has all the stereotypes in it. I didn't know we'd have to climb so many stairs though... 

We started off in good spirits!

Then got a bit tired...

But we made it to the top!

And here was our view!

And now for the real adventure. When most people come to Fuji Five Lakes area they go to a lake! Or they go to Fuji-Q (the best theme park in Japan with REAL roller coasters). Well, we've been to lakes, and while good roller coasters are tempting, spending all day waiting in line for maybe 3 rides is not. There is one less advertised attraction in the area, lava tubes. The last time Fuji erupted it created several lava tubes. Now most of these caves are cold and have icicles in them year round. So we went ice caving!

We started at the commercialized Ice cave and Wind cave. The ice cave was used to mine ice and the wind cave was used as a natural refrigerator in earlier times. We borrowed some hard hats and checked them out.

Shrine with past offerings buried in layers of ice

Now to get off the beaten path. There was one easily accessible cave on my map with zero information on the internet. Last time we went looking for something not overly advertised it was amazing so we went off in search for Ryugu Cave. At first look the cave was shallow and only held this shrine.

But further exploration through a side tunnel lead to an underground winter wonderland with ice forming from above and below!

The non frozen parts of the cave walls were covered in an extremely shiny white mineral.

Once we had our fill of ice, we made our was over to Lake Kawaguchiko for some more pictures of Fuji and then off on our long journey back to Yokosuka.