Spring is in the Air in Mount Fuji Japan

Mount Fuji Japan

They say you can’t miss what you never had, but I don’t know if that’s true. Growing up in San Diego I often felt like I missed the seasons. Maybe even more so than someone who had experienced them as I yearned for the idealized versions of them I learned about almost as soon as I started school. In kindergarten, we were taught the 4 times of the year by rote,
memorizing names from pictures incongruous with what I say around me.

Seasons from www.coreknowledge.org.uk

Snow on a fir tree signified winter just as surely as bright bulb flowers and baby animals meant Spring. Autumn was represented by beautiful leaves of brilliant oranges, reds, and golds. The only one I really recognized was the blue skies, big yellow sun, sandy beaches and rolling waves of summer. It sort of looked like “summer” all the time. Except for those few days a year when it rained, and we weren’t allowed to swim in the ocean for a week afterwards because of the pollutants the rarely used storm drains would then spew into the oceans.

Once I experienced the seasons in real life I realized that most of them are a lot colder than in pictures and so though enjoyable for a few weeks, summer is still top of my list.

Tom and I now try and make it a point to experience a week or two of each of the before unknown 3 seasons every year, intermixed with about 10 solid months of chasing summer around the globe.

Mount Fuji Flowers

Spring time in Mount Fuji was everything the storybooks promised it would be. Bright bulb flowers and chubby little animals running around, or at least statues of them.

Mount Fuji Blossoms

We stayed at K’s House Hostel after reading great reviews online. Our comfortable tatami mat room (with shared bath) was 7,200 JPY (about $70 USD) a night. The kitchen was incredibly well stocked, clean and large and there was a nice common room. The hostel was very kid friendly and we saw many families traveling with small children there.

The main reason we stayed there was because of the recommendation we read on a guest post by Amy Cham on neverendingvoyage.com I have never met Amy but found in Japan that we have one thing in common. A deep love of the onsen. I touched on it briefly in our post about Koyasan where we experienced our first onsen, but the onsen I visited in Mt. Fuji was something else! It is in an incredibly fancy hotel right next door to K’s house. The beautiful grounds and onsen are probably the best part of the hotel and can be enjoyed while staying at K’s to save tens of thousands of yen per night.

Mount Fuji Onsen

It cost 900 yen ($8.71) to use the onsen, which included steam rooms, several pools of different temperatures and an outdoor area. Deep in the roiling, boiling tub of an onsen is the only place in Japan that I felt truly warm. Spring is gorgeous, but boy does all that fresh air have a bite to it!

Mount Fuji Cherry Blossoms

Though the onsen and comfortable hostel were a plus, our main reason for being there was to see the beautiful and iconic Mount. Fuji. And see it we did! Not just in the distance sitting above the pretty little town but in pancakes and lollipops and sandwiches sold at every shop. We saw it’s likeness made of blossoms, made into soap, and even the soft serve claimed it was made to look like Mt. Fuji. Really it was just soft-serve but I can see the resemblance.

Mount Fuji ice creamMount Fuji Made of Flowers

We took a little cable car (Kachi Kachi Ropeway) up to Mount Tenjo, a small mountain with great views of Mt. Fuji. Mount Tenjo was covered in sculptures and drawings of a rabbit attacking a raccoon. Anyone who knows me will not be surprised to hear that while I did not understand why the rabbit was inflicting grievous harm on the raccoon I was all for it!

Mount Fuji Raccoon

The viewpoint was a great place to see Mt. Fuji from and seemed to be built for snapping photos with the snowy peak in the background. With the mountain at our backs, we were also afforded stunning views of the beautiful Lake Kawaguchiko spread out before us.

Mount Fuji Views

We got to the town via an easy bus from Tokyo to Mt. Fuji, and K’s house house offers pick-up and drop-off from the bus station to their hostel for free.

Jenny

I think of California as officially "home" but can usually be found a lot closer to the equatorial belt. After finishing a Masters program in 2011 I found myself trying to decide between a couple of different high-powered career options. I decided I wasn't quite ready to "grow up" and went with an entirely different plan which involved selling off everything I owned with my partner Tom and buying a one-way ticket to Colombia. Our plan was to travel "Till The Money Ran Out" and then go home to start our grown-up lives. Instead, we started our own app development company on the road and have been criss-crossing the globe, traveling, working, eating spicy food and refusing to "grow up" ever since. You can find me on Twitter, , Facebook or send me a message using our About Us page.

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8 Responses

  1. Aunt Ann says:

    So many beautiful flowers! Love it!

  2. Jill Lugay says:

    really beautiful! Great post

  3. Christine McDermott says:

    Hi! Did you guys climb Mt. Fuji at all? My boyfriend and I are looking to climb to the summit and I wasn’t sure if you had any recommendations. Also, the K’s House you mentioned, is that at the base of the mountain? Ideally we’d love to hit up an onsen after the climb for obvious reasons. Any intel helps. Thanks!

  4. Jenny says:

    Hi Christine. We did not climb Mt. Fuji, but K’s house is at the base. Visiting the onsen next door after the hike sounds like it will be lovely! Have a great time 🙂

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