Mount Fuji from Lake Kawaguchi

We meet in Shinjuku at 6:00am to set out on a road trip to the lake area around Mount Fuji. The objective of the day is to take photos of haikyos; it seems that the area was a very attractive holiday destination during the Japanese economic bubble of the eighties, and many hotels, resorts, restaurants and houses for wealthy people were built.

The first destination that we introduce in our GPS is lake Kawaguchi. The GPS decides that the best route to get there is using the Chuo highway, one of the elevated highways that crosses Tokyo. It’s only 120 kilometers but, being a Saturday, there is already a traffic jam to get out of the city. Until Hachioji exit the traffic is dense and it takes us two hours, then from Hachioji until the lake the traffic is more fluid and we exit the highway to enter National Road 128 around 9:00am.

We are almost arriving to our destination, we pass by in front of Fuji-Q Highland, an amusement park with many famous roller coasters, Carlos looks at the horizon and says:

“That which is hiding behind the clouds looks like Mount Fuji, isn’t it?

I look to the side and respond:

“If you doubt if it is or not, it will most likely not be Mount Fuji.”

We cross a bridge that takes us to the north part of the lake and we park our car next to a building that looks abandoned. We walk around it and it seems like it was some kind of hotel but it seems like we can’t go inside. Even being Summer, the area is surrounded by green grasslands. At the horizon we can spot a small house that seems taken out of Heidi.

We come back to our car and start surrounding the lake following the north road. We stop half-way to try to find another abandoned hotel but it seems like it has been demolished and there is nothing where it was supposed to be. Up until now we have not been very lucky in our haikyo hunt. We are in the car now ready to continue investigating, but just when we are going to start the car…

…suddenly Mount Fuji rises timidly from behind the clouds, changing our luck for the day. We jump out of the car, we walk to the lake shore and we take photos.

We can’t see it completely in any moment and only five minutes pass until the clouds cover it almost completely. But it’s enough for us, to see Mount Fuji from so near in Summer is not that easy, and we are quite happy about what we have seen and the pictures we have taken. Most likely we won’t see it again during the rest of the day… or maybe we will?

Photo taken by CaDs

Photo taken by CaDs

Photo taken by @GamiSatoko

Webcam in lake Kawaguchi-ko where you can see in real time if Mount Fuji can be seen: Webcam in Kawaguchi-ko.

Map of the lake area: Map of the lakes