Day 26

Second last day before our precious 21-day JR Pass expires. We had completely gotten used to the convenience of having it, punching in and out of stations and hopping on onto random Shinkansens like taking MRT. To fully utilize the JR pass, we decided to head down to the famous Mount Fuji, even though the weather forecast wasn't too optimistic - cloudy. And one can only see Mt Fuji's tip on a clear, cloudless day. We still went ahead nontheless, just so that we won't be regretting it in the future.

Yamanote line to Shinjuku, changed train to Otsuki, and then we had to change to the private Fuji line. There was a big crowd at the ticketing office, and everyone was anxious as the next train would depart in 5 minutes. They won't accept credit cards however, so I had no choice but to fish out the last few big notes hidden in my secret compartment as inconspicuously as possible. We bought the return train + ropeway package, thinking that it'd save us some money, but it turned out to be a big mistake on hindsight.

We hopped on to the cute train with different versions of Mt Fuji on it:



The cabins were spacious and seats had plenty of leg space, so much so that we could easily stretch out our legs without even touching the seats in front. The windows were huge as well, but unfortunately dirty too, so the scenery along the way turned out to be a tad greyish. We made a brief stop at Fuji-Q theme park, where everyone marveled at the "Iijanaika", a new roller coaster that featured crazy spins and dips. After seeing the insane slopes, Grace was glad that we chose not to visit the Fuji-Q.

It was upon reaching the Towadako Lake terminal that we panicked, having realised that we were supposed to go to Gotemba outlet later in the afternoon, and thus we didn't need the return train trip. It took quite a while for us to find two Caucasian ladies who eagerly snapped up our tickets at an absurdly low price. After settling that, we set off for the ropeway, but got lost halfway through as the map provided at the JR station was anything but detailed/useful. We had to intercept a poor lady who seemed to be rushing somewhere for directions. When we almost reached our destination, i made a blunder and made us climb up a steep slope that led to the CARPARK of the ropeway station rather than the actual station. Grumbling and throwing her arms in the air in exasperation, Grace made a little fuss before I coaxed her into walking down the slope again and up the other way to the ropeway station proper.


The ropeway station didn't appear too new, and the little cabins were at least a decade old. It had a funny name though, called the Mt Kachi Kachi ropeway. Legend has it that once upon a time, there were an evil beaver and a good rabbit. The beaver stole from the farmer, and the rabbit promised to avenge the farmer. On the first attempt, when rabbit and beaver went into the forest to gather firewood (dun ask me why), rabbit set fire to the firewood on beaver's back, scorching the latter but didn't kill it. On the second attempt rabbit succeeded in killing the beaver, but the method was forgotten (by us). These "legends" were written on the back of the ropeway tickets, and there were figurines of the animals at the station and at the mountain top observatory.




The view on the ropeway was breathtaking, the Towadako lake looked truly magnificent as we climbed further up into the air. Unfortunately Grace left our Vivita wide-angle lens camera at the hotel, so we could only try to snap a few pictures with our canon ixus. The end product could not do justice to the scenery at all.


Once we reached the top, we rushed to see Mt Fuji. But there wasn't any to be seen. The entire top portion of Mt Fuji was obscured by clouds. We could only make out the outline of the mountain, far from what we had expected. Disappointed, we tried to stay for a while and see if the clouds would be blown away, but nothing much changed after 20 minutes. While more Caucasians were camping out in the hope of the sky clearing up, we headed back downhill to catch the bus to Gotemba Outlet, the second largest outlet in Japan. Along the way, we heard a familiar tune - the one that was played at the junction between Hakata station and our Comfort Hotel when the pedestrians were crossing. Hearing that tune brought back fond memories, and we could hardly believe that we had barely 3.5 days left in Japan.

Long bus ride to Gotemba, and then a shuttle bus to the Outlet itself. Gotemba outlet was HUGE. It was divided into the eastern and the western district, each big enough to house an entire outlet park on its own. There were plenty of recreational facilities and parks along the way, and it even had its own Ferris wheel. Madness. Land is free here.

We headed over to the western district to fetch some lunch first, and after much walking around, we settled for this stall where you pay 990 yen for a plate, on which you can put as much food as you can. The guys before me made a huge pile of meat and veg, while I did a fair job with hamburger patties and a spread of other dishes. In retrospect I could have done better by alternating layers of hamburger patties with layers of rice, and emerge with a ridiculously huge pile, but that might have been a little too blatant =P Being poor folks we shared the plate between us, and were still a little hungry after it.

Then we headed to the Creamery, where they serve an interesting variety of custom-made mashed icecream sundaes. And the staff sang too!! Every now and then they'd follow the prompting of the lead girl and go "Yokoso~!!" or "Dozo~!!", before starting on a cute little song, ranging from Disney songs to Japanese children's songs. Grace's eyes were sparkling as she adored such songs, and they even had beautiful harmonizing mixed in as well. At the end of one song they ended off with "Dong dong~!!" in such a cute, nasal voice that'd give you goosebumps. The sundaes were delicious (and expensive too), but the atmosphere was terrific.



We didn't have much success shopping at Gotemba. Grace saw a nice Samsonite suitcase going for a special price of only 180SGD, but she dropped the thought of buying it after a phonecall to her dad. The GAP was thoroughly raided by the time we reached (almost everyone we saw in Gotemba carried a GAP shopping bag), so we didn't find anything satisfactory. At the end, we settled for another serving of Creamery icecream, before taking shuttle bus + local train + shinkansen + yamanote line back to Ikebukuro.

It was already 9+ pm when we reached Nobunaga, our 4th favourite ramen shop. We didn't see the Hideaki Takizawa look-alike staff that helped us last time, but we managed to figure out how to order via the vending machine ourselves. Grace got a regular bowl while I got a large bowl, and we both added extra charsiew, veg and egg. Everyone around us had upsized bowls with all toppings too, so we were actually eating the least amongst them. We had two different soup bases, both tasted fantastic, and this time we order hot noodle rather than the cold ones that we got last year, so our soups didn't get cold halfway through the meal. It's incredible how such a simple combination of soup and noodles could be so delicious. Full and satisfied, we headed back to hotel, barely 50m away from Nobunaga.