Post-Fuji Doings

Hey all. Steve here again.

For what it's worth, I'm not counting the climb as a failure. We saw the entire hike and could hardly have expected to be unaffected by that kind of fatigue and altitude. We made our very best effort and I'm calling that a success.

So aside from Fuji, one might wonder what Kawaguchiko has to offer. Answer: the Retro Bus! And the name is not purely some Japanese eccentricity. It does look rather retro. Think of a small bus, then put a vaguely Model-T-style front on it, and there you have it. It runs a route around Lake Kawaguchiko, stopping at various tourist destinations like parks and museums. But those sounded much too culturally enriching for us, so we decided on...

...the Kawaguchiko Ropeway! This is a sky-tram that takes you on a cable up into the hills around Kawaguchiko, surrounded by images of the facility's cartoony mascots: a rabbit and (I think) a fox. Looked sort of like a raccoon, but they don't have those here, so I'm going with fox. Couldn't read any of the dialogue in their speech bubbles, but I got the impression that these characters are outdoorsy types, into hiking and all that, but prone to mishap. At the top of the Ropeway, there's a big fiberglass statue of the fox lying on his belly, wailing in pain with big tears oozing from one eye, while the rabbit perches on top of him, applying some sort of balm to a wound on his back. Ah, family fun! There were also hiking trails at the top, but we weren't really into that after the Fuji climb. So we settled for some vending machine ice cream and took the tram back down.

After that, we visited the Fuji Visitor Center. (Note the cunning verb/object correspondence in that last sentence. I was an English major, you know!) The Visitor Center had a little mini-museum with lots of little facts about the mountain, most of which I don't remember now. I do recall that women weren't allowed on the mountain until 1800-something, so you women-folk who didn't want to come with us have missed an opportunity to strike a blow for sexual equality. What else...Japanese Buddhist monks once climbed Fuji as part of their training; some did it hundreds of times, for which I do not envy them. The first foreigner to climb Fuji was an Englishman of some variety. Speaking of which, when you press the "English" button to view a little edu-tainment video in English, the narrator always has a posh English accent. Makes the mountain sound terribly erudite.

So that more-or-less brings us to today. We might do the insane shopping center, just to have that experience. There's also one remaining shrine to the mountain goddess that we haven't visited yet, up in northern Kawaguchiko. Should probably go there and pay respects one last time, thank her for getting us off the mountain alive. Not sure what else we'll keep busy with. Got today and tomorrow, and then we begin the trip home!