Day 10 in Japan: The Gang splits up on the way to Fuji

We split up in the morning because each of us had a different idea of what to do with our last few hours in Tokyo. Ciaran wanted to have a nice breakfast at a bakery, while Brent and Joel needed to make a run to pick up Joel’s international driver’s licence from their next hotel in Tokyo (they had forgotten to get one while in the US, so they mailed themselves a copy). In the meantime, I realised I had not yet taken any nice pictures of the Tokyo Skytree, so I made a little trip to the Kameido Tenjin Shrine, where one can see the tower rise majestically above the temple’s old roof and the wisteria frames crisscrossing the gardens in front of it.

Our plan had been to reconvene at Busta Shinjuku, but when I arrived about twenty minutes before the bus’s departure, I found only Brent waiting there. Not very worried yet, I popped into a nearby convenience store to buy a few snacks for the road and bumped into Ciaran about ten minutes later. We arrived at the platform to find the bus already loading passengers and their luggage. This was when the stress began to set in. Joel had lost his way at the station after barely missing a traffic light and then barely missing a train, and each of us tried to text him what we thought would be the most useful guidance. As the station employees began to urge us to board the bus, we pleaded that they wait just a little longer for our last friend to come, but the staff were implacable. Nor did we gain anything with Brent’s attempt to stall the bus by boarding it very slowly and ungracefully. Joel missed us by just a few minutes.

The views from the bus were beautiful. Joel had booked us front row tickets, so we saw Mount Fuji as it emerged behind the mountain ridges south of Tokyo, sitting peacefully atop the busy road. The sky was blue and practically cloudless. Our original plan had been to ride all the way to our hotel by Yamanakako, but as we neared Mount Fuji Station in Fujiyoshida, Brent pointed out that we were close to the iconic Chureito Pagoda and asked if we wanted to leave the bus. It was a selfless suggestion, since he and Joel had brought too many things for him to lug around by himself, and he could not join us.

Ciaran and I left the bus at Mount Fuji Station, from which we took a train to the foot of hill on which Chureito Pagoda stands. Much to our amazement, Joel managed to make it there before we did. After missing the bus, he boarded three different trains on the route from Tokyo to the neighbourhood of Mount Fuji, which led him to the exact spot where Ciaran and I wanted to begin our hike. The big kicker of his whole anabasis was that somewhere along the way, he lost the international driver’s licence that had quite literally set this entire misadventure in motion. He had gone to pick it up himself after Brent and Ciaran chose a sit-down café to have breakfast, leaving Brent with his luggage in an unsuccessful attempt to make himself lighter and more mobile.

Having now, somehow, picked up Joel and lost Brent, we hiked up to Chureito Pagoda, a multi-tiered red tower that overlooks Mount Fuji. The cherry blossoms had already mostly wilted, but there were still enough to make for scenic views, and the sky remained perfectly blue. I audibly gasped when, at the beginning of our hike, we walked past a stall selling giant Fuji apples. We did not buy any, as they cost around the equivalent of four dollars, but the discovery elevated this already very impressive trip to a culinary and cultural pilgrimage – that is, a pilgrimage to the birthplace of one of the best apples.

While Joel continued to our hotel by Lake Yamanakako, Ciaran and I thought we would make Ciaran’s last day count by taking in sunset views from the west of Mount Fuji. We knew there was a bus to some gardens south of Lake Shoji, but the last one had already departed, and even if we managed to find a taxi, there were no guarantees that we would find a taxi back. We found a compelling alternative in the form of the bus to Lake Shoji. The problem with this plan was that it involved the last bus, and the timing of the last bus back from our destination gave us exactly half an hour at the lake. Nevertheless, in the absence of better ideas about how to spend our time, we decided this journey was the most interesting thing we could do.

The trip was well worth the time and effort. The views of Mount Fuji from Lake Shoji were pristine, and the cherry blossoms on the beach completed the iconic picture. Ciaran tried to inquire at a hotel to see if anyone there could help us find a taxi back to the city so that we could stay until sunset, but none of the hotels was staffed, so we followed through with our initial safe plan. When we made it to Lake Yamanakako, we found Brent and Joel at the only open restaurant in town. It was run by two Chinese ladies who had no idea how to respond to Chinese-speaking foreigners, and although they clearly understood us, they kept alternating between English and Japanese in their responses.