Mt. Fuji

Is barely visible 20km from its base. Other than that the Fuji-Kyu is amazing. I'm staying in a town called Kawaguchiko which is the base camp for a lot of hikers. Fuji-san is about a 7-8 hour climb from the 5th station about half way up the mountain. I think I'm going to do it tomorrow. I'm actually kind of disappointed, I wish I had one more day here. Theres a lot of really cool things around the base of the mountain that I want to see, but don't have the time for. After hiking I might try to hit up some of the closer spots, or maybe see them before heading off to Fuji-Kyu Highlands on Thursday.

Anyhow enough about planning. Today was actually kind of boring. I started out in Tokyo checking out of my hostel at 9:00 sharp. I wanted to go see the imperial palace and do one more round of shopping in Harajyuku. There was a coat that I saw that I wanted, but it was 150$. I thought it was to much when I first saw it, but I realized if I was going to climb Mt.Fuji it would be nice to have a light outer shell.

As I was walking to the subway station I realized how much junk I was carrying with me. Then I realized what time it was, and decided it wasn't the best decission in my life to start my travels with a giant backpack and a secondary backpack smack dab in the middle of Tokyo rush how in the busiest station in the world. Thankfully the Odakyu line, the one from my place to Shinjyuku wasn't that full. I somehow managed to fit my backpack into a locker without knocking over to many Japanese people as well. After that I just missed one train on the Yamanote line (one of the most popular lines) because it was to full before I managed to get on a nice semi empty train.

From there I went to Tokyo station to go see the Imperial Palace. To be honest it wasn't all that impressive. Granted it was still kind of raining at the time, but there wasn't much to see. I think it was templed out after visiting Nikko yesterday and so some green space in the center of downtown Tokyo didn't to much for me. I got some pictues, but only went to 2 of the four famous sights there. The other two were a gate and a statue. Neither of which I was that interested in.

Next up I wandered around Harajyuku for a bit trying to find the coat store. Thankfully I couldn't find it. 150$ is way to much to pay for a coat, even a fairly nice one.

That basically concluded my day. I took a very long train ride from Shinjyuku to Kawaguchiko, and bummed around here from 6 to now. I experienced my first real Onsen,which was cool but not amazing. There were like 6 different pools, but it was all indoors and felt very manufactured. The Sauna was fun though. Overall I'm glad I did it even though it wasn't amazing. Dinner was amazing though. It was the first meal I've had here that was filling. Super nice. Anyhow I'm going to get to bed early. I've got a big day tomorrow. I hope my feet are up for it.