11.21.09

We woke up SUPER early this morning (at 615) to go to breakfast before heading to Mount Fuji. We got on the bus and we were greeted by our adorable tour guide, Oka. We had 2 hours before we reached Mt. Fuji, so she gave us the history of the mountain. It really wasn’t all that exciting until she busted out some visual aids. She kept pulling things out of her bag like she as Mary Poppins. She had cutouts of the mountain and a poster of the elevation and even huge color photos of the emperor and the imperial family. She was just so cute! There was a car accident on the interstate. Go figure the only country that actually obeys traffic laws and it was the only country that we ever got held up because of an accident. Katie and I ended up passing out.

When we woke up, we arrived at the Mt. Fuji’s Visitor Center. It was basically an info center and gift shop. While we were outside taking pictures in front of Mt. Fuji, a group of Japanese ladies asked us to take their pictures. They were so cute. After we left, we headed up to the 5^th station on Mt. Fuji, which is the highest point we can get to because it is winter and about half way up the mountain. There were a bunch of shops and restaurants so we peeked into a few of them. We ran into our Japanese friends, who also high fived Mackenzie in the bathroom. They tried to teach me the Japanese word for opossum, but I don’t remember what it was. They were still just as adorable. We walked along the shops and also found a shrine with a overlook. I am really glad that there was snow even though it made it a little bit hard to walk. The snow was breath taking.

We got back on the bus, where we tore into our last box lunches. Oh how I am not going to miss those boxed lunches. They haven’t improved any since the beginning of the voyage. Our next stop was Hakone. This is where we had the lovely pleasure of riding in a cable bar to the top of Mt. Hakone. I was not too excited about that. MacGarret and I just hung out in the middle of the cable car. It wasn’t as bad as the one on Table Mountain, but it wasn’t great either.

Before we got on the cable bar. We saw these large mechanical animals, like pandas or dogs. They were pretty much the funniest thing ever. We made it to the top of the mountain in 8 minutes. I know it was 8 minutes because Oka told us about 20 times. We happened to get to the top of the mountain right when a cloud got there as well. Our view was about as good as it was when we were on Radhost in the Czech Republic. It was basically the inside of a cloud and you couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of you. We were able to entertain ourselves with a photo booth and hot chocolate. The ride down wasn’t as bad.

When we got down we had 20 minutes of free time so we went into the little shops then met up at the lake. I thought we were going to be really lucky and take a swan boat to the other side of the lake, but it wasn’t so. While we were waiting to get on the ferry, Mackenzie decided to pick up some “LEAves.” It was a pretty interesting conversation about the plural pronunciation of “leaf.” Mackenzie also wound up with a stick that she was carrying around and called her sling shot. She was just cracking me up because she was so distracted by the botanical life in Hakone. Who knew it would be that interesting.

Once on the boat, we had a great view of Fuji and Hakone. Of course as soon as we got down from the cable car, the cloud moved and the view would have been incredible. We took the ferry to the other side of the lake. We back on the bus and headed back to the ship. We ran into more traffic on the way back, which was bad because on ship time was 9 and it was already 715 and we wanted to grab dinner off the ship. When we got into the port, we ran off the ship in search of Japanese food. We epically failed and ended up at a place called Jonathan’s. We had 3 plates of egg rolls and 2 plates of calamari. Yep, epically fail at Japanese food.

We made it back on the ship with about 45 minutes to spare. We dropped our stuff and ended up meeting up on the 7^th deck for ice cream. We played some pish posh and headed to bed.