Mount Fuji

Dad’s weather report threatened thunder later in the day so we were all up early. Dad looked a little tired. He went out and bought himself breakfast. We left around 10am.

On our way to our first stop, we quickly stopped at lake yamananako … one of Fujis five lakes. It was very hot but the view was great. We took quite a few photos while mum chatted to a local bike rental person.

Our first proper stop would be our highest of the trip. Mount Fuji has a car park half way up the mountain called the 5th stop. It was weird as dad had to drive quite far down before heading back up again. Once there we all - bar grandad - climbed Mount Fuji… for about 10 minutes. Once done we took some photos. It was pretty cloudy so the photos were ‘okay’ at best. It was a great experience and hopefully, when we are older, we will be able to climb Mount Fuji for real.

The trip down was uneventful. Mum directed dad to a lovely small house/ shop complex when you got views of Mount Fuji with some lovely old buildings in the foreground. We first had dinner. Yuto decided that he wanted to crawl a lot as he had been in the car for ages so, he crawled around waving at all other diners. Haruki played with his iPad. Mum tried the local Houtou … a traditional dish from these parts. Dad had tempura. After dinner we walked around the old buildings, ate ice cream and took photos of Mt Fuji.

We left this area around 3pm and headed back to our apartment to drop off grandma and grandpa and Haruki. Yuto, mum and dad went around the last three lakes. Fuji has five lakes surrounding it. One was done yesterday, one this morning and now we were going to see the last three. They were all beautiful however, when we arrived at Shojiko the clouds parted from Mount Fuji and so mum and dad took some wonderful photos.

One the way back to the apartment, mum and dad bought pizza from a very friendly pizza takeaway place…. Teriyaki was one and shrimp was the other.

Today is our last day on our Japanese holiday. Tomorrow we head back to grandma and grandpa’s house in Sendai. It’s weird to have a holiday within a holiday finish. It’s a bit like that film inception….

… not that we have seen it.

Toodle pip,

Mount Fuji and Shimodo

We awoke to the sound of nature. Last night, Yuto had done laps over the futons … much to the annoyance of Haruki. We played a little in the morning before leaving at 10am. What a wonderful place to stay.

Today our destination was Mount Fuji … which was only an hour away. On the way, we stopped at some shops and drove around a stunning lake which offered excellent views of Mount Fuji. Sadly cloud covered the top of Mount Fuji but you could still see quite a bit. 

Once we finished around the lake we went to find our apartment. Grandad still wasn’t feeling perfect therefore, we opted for early check in. Grandma and grandad relaxed at the apartment whereas mum, dad and us two got back in the car.

We had no idea where we were going however, it was very complicated. We went on something called the highway and mum had to tell dad ‘left’ or ‘right’ quiet a few times. If we had known how long the drive was, I am not sure we would have a agreed to go. We decided to fall asleep so we could annoy our parents tonight.

Apparently dad said the road to Shimoda was stunning. That’s right, we were heading to Izu hanto. The place was very green with wonderful mini mountains. Dad even drove up a huge mountain and back down the other side to reach Shimoda … the place where Perry landed and opened up Japan. We only stayed 20 minutes if that. Dad was worried about getting back through the mountains before it was dark.

This time we were awake for the return journey and both Haruki and Yuto agreed … this place was magical … as if it had come out of Avatar … whatever that is.

Before leaving the peninsula, we stopped in Izu for sushi. Both Haruki and Yuto were bored at this point so we made our parents lives as busy as possible as they tried to eat their dinner. Other guests said that we were cute but, I don’t think our parents thought that.

Back in the car it was night. Dad drove back to our place at Mount Fuji with mum carefully navigating. Once back we all had a bath and got ready for bed which was around midnight.

We overheard the adults say that the best weather was in the morning so, we might be up early.

Toodle pip!

Hot cities and beautiful views

We awoke to a very hot Kawagoe. 36 degrees in fact. We were happy when dad put us in a car our grandad had already started the aircon in. We didn’t drive far. We parked in a car park on the main tourist street we had walked down last night. Mum took dad for a walk and said it would only take five minutes. 30 minutes later and they returned with gifts for our grandma in the UK.

We drove off then into the mountains. Kawagoe was 36 degrees but soon, high in the mountains it had settled down to 28 degrees. We drove to a stunning damned lake. Quiet rightly, dad went and looked at the view whereas grandad, grandma and mum pushed us inside a building where we had dinner. Restaurants can be annoying. In the UK if Yuto or I wanted to eat our own snack before dinner we could … but here we keep getting told off. Mum was getting annoyed too. 

After dinner we played in this wonderful wooden ball pool. It was brilliant. You could feed balls into tubes and they would roll down into the ball pool. The only thing is, balls came quickly on the right hand side tube whereas, the left hand took a while. The left hand represented a healthy forest where water took a long time to enter a pool due to roots … the right wasn’t good.

Once done grandad said let’s go back to the car. Dad and us two protested. We hadn’t spent any time looking at the lake. Grandad laughed and off we went to look at this stunning view.

We continued our drive until we were within a mountain village. Tonight we were staying in a 200 year old mountain house. Mum had chosen an amazing place to stay. The house was filled with history. We had a huge futon bed which Yuto was very much looking forward to rolling around. After food shopping and eating dinner, we all settled down to a lovely evening of reading, playing and looking out at the view which, consisted of a beautiful tree with pink petals in the foreground, followed by a lovely mountain valley all around. 

Sadly grandad wasn’t well so he had gone to bed early. A part from that, what a wonderful way to spend a day.

Buddhas, traffic and old streets

By the time we got up mum, dad, grandma and grandad had been up for sometime. It looked as though we were off today which was a shame, as we were both liking it here. Haruki went with mum and grandad to the beach whereas Yuto stayed with dad and grandma and continued to pack. We all left around 10am.

Mum drove the same way we had driven yesterday. It looked as though we were going all the way back to Tateyama however, once off the highway we turned up a giant mountain. We all got out into the boiling heat. Both Yuto and Haruki had no idea why we were walking in the heat however, after a short downward walk we ended up at a massive Buddha. Mount Nokogri housed this massive Buddha for good health. It was certainly impressive.

Dad seemed to have other things on his mind. One of his favourite shows called ‘Top Gear’ came here apparently to see the Buddha for road safety. Dad went off on his own for a little while. He came back looking really hot and quite unwell. Apparently he had climbed the height of the mountain but failed to find the Buddha. He didn’t look well and his clothes were wet through. He was quite disappointed.

Once back in the car grandad drove up to the second car park and dad spent a lot of time in front of the air conditioning. He looked much better. To our surprise mum and dad went off again. Apparently they went wrong again, climbed more stairs but eventually found the Buddha. Both mum and dad agreed it was worth it however, due to the heat Yuto and Haruki agreed it was better in the car.

Grandad drove to our lunch stop where we had ramen. Dad, who was feeling much better after drinking lots of drinks and eating chocolate and a salty meal, took over after that and drove through Tokyo. We were both looking forward to seeing Tokyo however, once over the bridge and tunnel we went through two days ago to get to Chiba, we just stayed in a tunnel full of traffic. It was really boring.

After an age we surfaced and entered a city called kawagoe. This city, according to my dad’s guidebook was meant to be ‘a mini edo’ with a lot of old buildings however … there were none. After checking into the Prince Hotel mum, dad, grandma, Haruki and Yuto went out into  Kawagoe and, after a 10 minute walk, found the old buildings. It was 8pm now and so it was a little cooler. We walked the whole street. It was very pretty with a lot of lanterns lighting the side of the road. There were a lot of shops mum wanted to visit but all sadly closed. When they open, it’ll be really hot so they wondered about driving a long the road tomorrow. That sounds like a good idea to us.

We returned to the hotel with something called yakitori and some donuts from Mr donuts. It was a nice light dinner. 

So no real plan for tomorrow … let’s just see what will happen. It is very hot here.

Beach!

We both slept like a rock … we all did. Mum and I were up first but Haruki and dad woke Up at nearly 10am. We got ready quickly and off we went to the beach.

Mum had picked an excellent place to stay. The beach was only a 10 minute walk. As soon as we arrived at the beach, Haruki ran into the water and there he stayed for our whole trip. Remembering what happened in Cornwall - Yuto doesn’t know because he wasn’t born - mum and dad kept a close eye on Haruki. Yuto didn’t mind the water but wasn’t sure when a wave came close.

It was so hot but you couldn’t really tell. We stayed for about an hour due to the risk of sunburn and returned to our apartment. As we washed off in the shower it looked as though we had taken half the beach with us.

We had lunch and then departed in the car at 2:30pm. Chiba is very rural and, it doesn’t look like many people live here. With all the palm trees my dad said it looked like Hawaii… wherever that is. We stopped off at a beautiful park called Cape Hachiman park in Katsuura … which was lovely. We then continued to tateyama where we had a lovely meal though, the lady was a little weird. She wouldn’t let Yuto stay in my pushchair and the baby chair had no belt! Mum and Dad had to hold Yuto as they ate. It was lovely though … especially the fish.

We visted an Aeon Town to try mums post office card … still no luck before departing for our apartment. No one else seemed to be at the Aeon Town.

We arrived back at the apartment and had a shower before heading to sleep. Tomorrow we leave here apparently… we will both miss the beach.

On our way to Japan

We both got rudely awoken at … I think … 5am. Haruki didn’t mind but Yuto likes his lie-ins. It would appear that mum and dad had already been up an hour. We got dressed and then, something called a taxi, was awaiting outside. This was most irregular. I wondered where it was taking us. Dad checked the house for the fifth time and finally we left home.

Of course we both fell asleep whilst travelling. We went down something called the M1. We arrived at ‘Heathrow airport’. Not sure what an airport is, we went inside.

We sat for a little while eating breakfast before we had to go through something called ‘security’. Yuto found security funny however, Haruki really didn’t want to be scanned. The security guard had fun chasing him around.

Went did a bit of boring shopping before discovering what an airport was. It houses aeroplanes!!! We were both very excited and wanted to spend all day watching them however, we soon had to board our own plane … for 13 hours! We were both really excited.

… 13 hours later…

I am not sure what we were excited about. We had hardly any room and it was difficult to sleep. Yuto on three occasions slipped past dad’s legs and crawled up the isle… much to the amusement of all on board. We both hardly cried and I think mum and dad were happy.

Once in a place called Japan, we discovered it was hot. A nice lady gave us a. Lift all the way to immigration and our bags. Though we were last off the flight due to where we were sat and our luggage, we had made it to the baggage area before a lot of people on our flight.

Once through the exit we met our mums family. Haruki recognised koz’s mum, dad, brother and his son. Both were a little confused about her cousin however, for Yuto this was the first time they met. We ate at the airport and got a SIM card for Japan before leaving.

It wasn’t long before we made it to our first tourist attraction. Umihotaru is a small man made island where a tunnel and bridge connect. Due to the heat, we waited in the car with grandad. Mum, dad, cousin and grandma went inside … but they weren’t long. Apparently a few good photos were taken. We would have loved to have gone … maybe next time.

Our next stop was in Chiba. We went to see my mums uncle who is sadly not well. We all said hello and he was very happy to see us. He had A lovely room in his care home.

We made it to our home for the next two nights and I did wonder if mum had made a mistake … there was no one here for miles! Still we could hear the sea so, it must be good. 

Mum and dad went to a local supermarket. They bought a lot of Japanese food and Haruki loved the onigiri. Dad said that he was stared at a lot. He also said that he had forgotten how slow driving is. I didn’t really understand but he did say something about just sitting in a car, suspended in the air and waiting for the surface of the earth to rotate would be quicker than driving. I am not sure he was telling the truth.

Due it now being late on Monday, this post covers two days…ish. We are both tired so off we went to bed.

Toodle pip