Mt. Fuji

This is the second part of our blog about our trip to Japan.

Mount Fuji (12,388 feet / 3996 meters) is THE iconic sight-to-see in Japan. We were lucky and got to see it twice! 

We visited the Hakone District and stayed in a traditional Japanese inn. It had the traditional Japanese breakfast of soup, rice, fish and assorted things we couldn't identify.

We were about 19 miles from the mountain. It is still an active volcano. This is the best picture we got of Mt. Fuji. Many Japanese walk to the top of it, but we didn't ...

We were in the Hakone district as part of our tour. This is a district with many lakes where people go in the summer to escape the heat. Jim wasn't happy with the word "Ropeway" instead of "Cable Car."

We really like the view from cable cars. Jim always takes a lot of pictures.

Jim took this picture of tourists taking pictures of him taking pictures of them …  

The top of the cable car was 1327 meters above sea level. That is about 4113 feet. This would be about one fourth as high as the top of Mt Fuji.

This is us and our travelling companion Erna with Mt Fuji in the background. The sun was really bright. Notice our glasses had turned almost completely black! As you can sea, Mt Fuji was already starting to disappear into the clouds. The people on the cable car behind ours missed it completely!

The lake was very pleasant and we had a very nice lunch at the Bakery & Table Café. The signs in Japan were very clear and they understand tourism very well. Clean restrooms were everywhere. Japan is ready for the 2020 Olympics!

The scenery around the lake was beautiful.

This is part of the tourism experience. You moved around the lake by boat and three of the boats were rigged out as pirate ships for the tourists.

This was our second chance to see Mt Fuji. We were on the Bullet Train going back to Tokyo from Kyoto and noticed that the map said it was possible to see Mt Fuji. We looked for it and got lucky!