Christmas Carry on
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2008
1
27
71
Trip End
Sep 03, 2009
Fujiyoshida,
Chubu,
Japan
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Walking down the hill to the station in Nikko, I thankfully realised I was at the privately-owned station, rather than the JR station in plenty of time to walk down to other one. Hanging around the totally deserted station in the cold, quite a contrast from the other station which had been very busy, I pondered what I would have been doing had I been at home. Actually, I knew what I would have been doing, as it would have been about 3am so I would be asleep like any good girl on Christmas eve, waiting for Santa
I never did find out where the party was!
.The route was simple enough. Three trains to Kawaguchi and the hostel should be opposite the train station. The hostel had been recommended to me by someone I met and she told me the name of the station to type into the Rail website to look up. Three hours later and slightly suspicious as to why I was in a city with no sign of Mount Fuji, I walked out of the station. My hostel was nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately the station had no tourist information and the people in the ticket office spoke no English. I asked if it was Kawaguchi-ko, and they said it was, even after I showed them the name written down. Walking round the streets very lost, I tried asking a few people were the hostel was, but none of them spoke English either. All the time I was lugging my not-so-light bags around. I was stuffed. I may have sworn a little at this point.
My luck then changed, when an Internet cafe appeared like a beacon, inviting me into its expanse of enlightenment. Ok, Ok, so if I'd learnt how to use the Internet properly, I probably wouldn't have ended up there in the first place, but now it was my lifeline, as the ticket master certainly wasn't going to be putting me on a train Kawaguchiko when he thought I was already there. After wrestling my no-so-small bags into the not-so-big Internet booth, I managed to find my onward route and wasted no time in getting back to the station
Mount Fuji
. The first train went without a hitch, but as it was only a 7 minute journey, I would have had to try hard to stuff it up. It was very hard to understand which trains were stopping where on the next platform as a lot of trains go from the same place, but not all of them stop where you want. I asked someone if the approaching train would be stopping at my station, and as he spoke very good English, I trusted him when he insisted it was the right one. Needless to say, it wasn't the right one.And so, thats how, 9 hours and 9 trains later, I rolled into my hostel at 9pm on Christmas day. It was a relief to arrive there, I can tell you. The traffic lights to cross the road to the hostel even played me a little tune to greet me whilst I was waiting to cross the road and accompanied me along the way. The hostel even had its own onsen, which I had to myself and was at least a nice end to the day. And this time I even didn't totally break onsen etiquette by completely forgetting to shower before getting in, which I managed to do on my first try, with 2 Japanese ladies there to witness. Opps. Bloody Geijins!
As for Mount Fuji itself, it was indeed cone-shaped and snow covered. There wasn't much to the village, but it was a nice escape from the city. A lot of the main tourist attractions were closed for winter. I did think about going up to one of the camps on Fuji, but apparently they were closed as well. It was very cold but the only snow was on Fuji. That pretty sums up my time spent there!
It took me three days to get the tune played continuously by the pedestrian lights out of my head. It was clearly audible from the dorm room. I can still hear it now! Argh!
