So when we booked the holiday it was a bit of a bundle. The main bit was the cruise, but it also included 3 nights/2 days in Tokyo at the beginning, and one of those days there was an included excursion to Mount Fuji and Lake Hakone. We'd wanted to have a free day in Tokyo first then do the excursion the day after, thereby giving us a bit of time to recover from the travelling, but that would have meant doing the excursion on a Sunday, and they don't run them on a Sunday. The result of all this was that the OH spent the second half of our journey to Japan muttering darkly about how it would be sensible to cancel the Fuji trip as we wouldn't be able to get up in time for it ( it was am early start!) and even if we did we would be too tired to enjoy it. Being a thrifty soul and conscious that we had actually already paid for this trip, I was loth to do that and said we should see how things went. And how they went was that we were awake in plenty of time to have breakfast and get to the meeting point and we didn't fall asleep in the coach either.
( Spoiler - it was a great day and we both agreed we were really glad we hadn't cancelled it )
We know a few people who have been to Japan in the past few years. They have all gone to see Mount Fuji and not one of them had actually glimpsed the summit, as it was wreathed in cloud. We were very lucky; we had blue skies, sunshine and a great view of the mountain.
They take you a fair way up, to what they call the fifth station and there was a small shrine, a huge gift shop and an ice cream kiosk. The OH is always up for an ice cream and he tried the white peach flavour. It was delicious. Generally speaking the Japanese make great ice cream we discovered.
You are enticed into the gift shop by being given a voucher to redeem for a set of free 'lucky bells'; the counter for this is strategically placed at the back of the shop so you have to go through it twice. That said it was one of the very few places we found in Japan that actually sold postcards of views/sites. Had I known this would be the case I would have bought more there, but, blithely ignorant, I restricted myself to three and then spent days afterwards fretting that I would never find any more. Don't get me wrong; there were beautiful postcards but they were of the art variety rather than the sort where you write 'we woz here' on the back and slap on a stamp.
After Fuji we went to a restaurant for a typical Japanese lunch. I did rather better with this than anyone could have anticipated, and made quite a good job of eating with chopsticks, not something I've attempted before.
See that fish shaped thing? Not fish. Some sort of baked custard.
After lunch we had a drumming performance by a group of local youngsters with Downs Syndrome. The tour company supports various local groups that provide activities and social events for people with disabilities. This group certainly enjoyed their drumming, and we did too.
Then it was on to Lake Hakone for a short boat cruise. A beautiful trip ....
...passing some Shinto shrines on the way
And finally we caught a cable car up to the top of one of the mountains for a panoramic view of the area. My dislike of heights notwithstanding I enjoyed the cable car trip and the view was worth it, although the photograph doesn't do it justice.
And then it was a case of 'everybody back on the coach' for the return to Tokyo. We weren't very hungry so just popped into one of Japan's famous convenience stores, (I think it was Family Mart, but don't quote me) located just across the road from the hotel and bought some sandwiches and a packet of these
Yup, raspberry flavoured KitKats. We planned to go back the next day to try the strawberry version but somehow that never happened.
