Gropezilla hits Japan: An angry mountain, cable cars and black eggs

Day Three – Mt Fuji and Hakone

Wednesday morning, bright sun shiney day and I wake up to Kev saying “Oh Fuck, we have no accommodation!!” so that’s not ideal. We are heading up to Nihonmatsu on Monday and were expecting to stay at the Urban hotel in the town centre, we got an email from Emily at Powervehicles saying that the Urban had made a mistake and there was no room for us. Ahhhh Crap!!!! So instead of staying in the town centre we are now staying in Cottages that are about half an hour outside of town (but still 15 minutes to the track) and there is no Internet!!!!! OHHHHHHH GOOODDDDDDD WONT SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE KIDS!!!!! But atleast we are still going and we will have separate rooms YAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Todays pro tip, if you need to be somewhere at 9am, leaving at 8am in rush hour trains is not going to work out in your favour. We needed to get to the Hamamatsucho Bus Terminal to catch our bus to go on our tour, and man did we cut it fine, we even got a red dot on our stickers for our troubles (I think the red sticker is what happens when you be naughty….). We finally boarded the bus and choot choot chugga chugga we were off up the mountain to visit the Goddess.

Yes Hipsters like tours as well

Here is a bit of back story on the folk history of Mt Fuji, many many years ago there was a Man Mountain and a Lady Mountain (Fuji) and they used to argue all the time over who was the tallest, to settle the dispute they asked Buddha to measure them and tell them once and for all who was the tallest, so Buddha being a good sport got out his measuring stick and decreed that the man mountain was the tallest, Fuji was so enraged by this that she took the stick and she beat the man mountain so hard that he broke into 8 small little pieces. Bitches be crazy yo!!! I don’t like being this tall but I guess some girls, well they love it. Clearly. She stands 12385mtrs tall (the 5^th station is only 2305m)

Just Chilling with some angry Bitch in the background

Some other interesting facts about Fuji

Climbing Season is from July 1^st to August 26^th
During this time the summit is the warmest at about 5 degrees (fuck that for a joke)
There are 10 stations and it can take about 6 hours to climb
She was former through volcanic eruptions and is still active but hasn’t erupted since 1707

Its very rare that you get a clear view of her because she is known to be very shy, but she must have heard that we were coming and she got her bits out in preparation. We drove up to the 5^th Station which is the highest point you can go by car and the views were spectacular and you could see for miles in all directions. They even have a post box, so for you special selects (well really only my family because I don’t know anyone elses address) keep your eyes out for a genuine postcard posted from the 5^th station at Fuji. I guess one of the draw backs about being on a tour is that everything is really rushed so we only had half an hour there and by the time I got my postcards done and picked up a few souvenirs it was time to jump back onto the bus and get the heck out of Gotham.

Probably only slot sticking I will get this holiday

Next Stop was the Hakone Rope Way, think ski cable cars and you are about on the money. You get in the little car and choo choo all the way up to the top and as you go up you get a stunning view of Lake Ashi and Fuji in the distance. We shared a car with some Americans, another Aussie and an English girl. Not Surprisingly, we (or me) were the rowdiest chaps on the tour. After alighting at the top of the rope way, I went for a ride on an Anpanman :D for those of you who don’t know Anpan is a super hero with a bread face and when people are in trouble he lets people eat his face. Kinda creepy but the Japanese lap that shit up. He is also in the Guiness book of records for having the most characters EVER in a cartoon series with about 2000 or so. Anyway I digress, at the top of the rope way is natural hot springs, the legend is that if you eat an egg boiled in the hot springs it gives you seven years of extra life. You can only buy the eggs in lots of 5 so whilst I may have high cholesterol, death cant touch me for 35 extra years. Yeahhhhh!!!!!!! In your face death!!!!!

Yo Kitteh, Im Eating your Egg

Egg that has been cooked in the Hot springs

Egg, Egg, 7 Years

Last stop of the day was a cruise around Lake Ashi, known to the Japanese as Lake Ashinoko – Lake of Reeds. It is said that there was a 9 headed Dragon that lived in the lake and used to eat little children (clearly he didn’t eat enough, those fuckers are everywhere squarking and annoying me) so a Buddist Monk came and prayed and prayed and finally the Dragon went away. There are Tori gates dotted around the lake as shrines for this. We went on a Boat called Victory for some raping and pillaging and a trip around the lake (sadly the raping and pillaging was missing though) I even got my photo taken with a Pirate (as our new friend Ben said, throw Captain Feather Sword and Harry Potter in a blender and this is the pirate you would get). Best thing about this boat was that you could get beer. Kempai to that.

Back to Tokyo and I learnt that Asians whilst possibly awesome at making food, are shit at directions (translated Kev got us lost) but in the end we found what we were looking for, and really the photos speak for themselves… Enjoy my pretties