Japan | Pt. 2 | Fuji to Yudanaka

We begin the next leg of our jour­ney imme­di­ate­ly from where we left off in Part 1, leav­ing the bright lights and bustling sounds of Tokyo for the qui­et beau­ty of the Japan­ese countryside.

This is prob­a­bly our favourite part of our trav­els across Japan — it’s also the short­est, at two days with sev­en hours on the train between them.

Just over halfway to Mt. Fuji, our train from Tokyo came to a halt at Ōtsu­ki sta­tion, a quaint lit­tle ter­mi­nal with wood­en accents that gave it a lodge‑y (if not toy-like) feel. Guides ush­ered guests to their next stop and, as we bought our tick­ets for the next train, one of them sug­gest­ed we take the Fujikyu Rail­way instead of any of the oth­er options. He hint­ed that we would enjoy it more, and that if it was our first time in the area, it was a must. He was right.

Like some­thing out of a Wes Ander­son movie, each cab­in was metic­u­lous­ly dec­o­rat­ed to look like a ski lodge, com­plete with com­fort­able sofas to lounge on as Mt. Fuji comes into view. A pre-recorded nar­ra­tion — in both Japan­ese and Eng­lish — directs pas­sen­gers to notable sights through­out the ride. It was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence and one that would be hard to pass up on even the next time we make our way to Fuji.

We arrived at Kawaguchiko, part of the Fuji Five Lakes area, where we were imme­di­ate­ly greet­ed by what would have been our oth­er mode of trav­el — a train dec­o­rat­ed with Fuji car­toons — amongst oth­er Fuji-themed sights.

It was get­ting dark quick­ly, so we shut­tled it to our hotel, Shuhokaku Koget­su. This, along with our hotel in Yudana­ka, were ryokans. Ryokans are more tra­di­tion­al, atmos­pher­ic inns in Japan, com­plete with slid­ing paper doors, yukatas (casu­al kimonos), pri­vate kaise­ki (tra­di­tion­al multi-course Japan­ese din­ner), and pub­lic onsens. These may or may not be your cup of tea, but in Japan, these are lux­u­ry and pre­ferred over tra­di­tion­al West­ern accom­mo­da­tions, and they’re priced accord­ing­ly as well.

Speak­ing of cups of tea, there was a pot of freshly-brewed green tea in the room when we arrived. It was a nice warm way to end a long day of trav­el­ing and start what would be a very short, yet awe-inspiring stay near Mt. Fuji.

The Kaise­ki din­ner was wel­come, although not entire­ly edi­ble. There were a few hits, and some dis­as­trous miss­es, usu­al­ly in the form of an unrec­og­niz­able gooey sub­stance. We knew there would be horse meat at some point, and it was actu­al­ly one of the bet­ter tast­ing meats in the meal — in fact, it was delicious.

We were told there was a maple fes­ti­val hap­pen­ing just down the road, so we went to check it out after din­ner. It was a nice short walk through a park with elab­o­rate light­ing set up to accent the chang­ing leaves of the maple trees at night. We want­ed to vis­it Fujiya­ma Cook­ie, but because Kawaguchiko is such a small town, every­thing clos­es pret­ty ear­ly. Our only regret was not arriv­ing any ear­li­er that day. See­ing as we were tak­ing off the next morn­ing, we would be leav­ing this serene lit­tle spot unexplored.

BUT we did go for a hike in the morn­ing just before leav­ing to get a bet­ter look at Mt. Fuji. The view across the lake was noth­ing short of breath­tak­ing. Actu­al­ly, it was inde­scrib­able and we only hope that these pho­tos do it justice.

We real­ly weren’t expect­ing to feel any­thing when look­ing out unto that lake, Fuji tow­er­ing in the back­ground — we’re not ones to be awed by things like that — but it’s hard to not be com­plete­ly tak­en aback by its grandeur and sheer beauty.

Vic­to­ria walk­ing over to the per­fect van­tage point.

We left Fuji for what would be a 6‑hour sequence of train rides to Yudana­ka, the most rur­al loca­tion in our itin­er­ary. We picked up lots of snacks and a hand­ful of ques­tion­able alco­holic drinks for the jour­ney. A cou­ple of trans­fers (and one near dev­as­tat­ing miss of the last train to our des­ti­na­tion) lat­er and we had arrived at Yudanaka.

It was anoth­er small town, but sur­pris­ing­ly devel­oped for being the most rur­al and most remote stop on the train route.

There were two things we were real­ly excit­ed for here: trekking to the Jigoku­dani Mon­key Park, and enjoy­ing our own pri­vate onsen on the bal­cony of our room. It was per­haps this excite­ment that pushed us to forego call­ing our hotel’s shut­tle and walk there instead (“It’s only 5 min­utes away!”). After so many hours of sit­ting, it was nice to stretch out our legs, breath in the clean­er air and take in all the sights.

We quick­ly real­ized that instead of tak­ing the road that our hotel was on, we had strolled down a par­al­lel street that slow­ly broke away from our des­ti­na­tion but that Google Maps assured us con­nect­ed to it lat­er down the road. Only thing was that these par­al­lel roads were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ascend­ing and descend­ing and the lit­tle con­nec­tion that Google let us in on was a mas­sive climb of tiny steps up the side of the hill. Because Ricar­do is ter­ri­fied of heights, this was a hilar­i­ous­ly enter­tain­ing mile­stone, which he sort of crab-walked towards the end.

We reached the Ryokan Biyu no Yado, which was eas­i­ly one of our favourite hotels from the entire trip. We admired the view from our bal­cony. Nes­tled amongst the moun­tains that cir­cle the vil­lage in, Yudana­ka was an incred­i­ble place to sim­ply stare off at. Look down at the town and you’re greet­ed by intri­cate lit­tle roads and build­ings that slow­ly trick­le off into the moun­tains; squint hard enough and you’ll see tiny hints of hot spring smoke form­ing along these mountains.

The water in our bal­cony onsen was actu­al­ly fun­nelled in from one of these hot springs and there was noth­ing we want­ed to do more than enjoy it. We jumped into our yukatas, and head­ed down to din­ner — anoth­er kaise­ki, albeit a tasti­er one that we paired with some sake. The hotel own­ers came to check in on us at din­ner and, despite liv­ing in this most remote area of Japan, we were sur­prised to find they spoke per­fect eng­lish (bet­ter than any­thing we had encoun­tered in Tokyo) and have a daugh­ter attend­ing U of T. We talked about Toron­to, they thanked us for stay­ing at their hotel, and then filled us in on the fact that we had the only pri­vate onsen in the entire ryokan. They told us a lit­tle bit about the his­to­ry behind the hot springs and how spe­cial the room was — it was a nice touch to a very mem­o­rable din­ner. We felt com­plete­ly tak­en care of and hum­bled by their ser­vice. After din­ner, we went and enjoyed the now-infamous onsen.

The next day, we made our way to the mon­key park to see some free-roaming mon­keys bask in their own pri­vate hot spring. Prob­a­bly most famous in the win­ter, when the “snow mon­keys” all set­tle into one hot spring to bathe each oth­er, it was still quite the sight in the fall and the mon­keys were a lit­tle more com­fort­able mov­ing around, in and out­side of the hot water. We had a long hike through the woods and up the moun­tain before reach­ing the park itself — which was a wel­come surprise.

I’m try­ing to find a word oth­er than amaz­ing or breath­tak­ing to describe both the hike and our expe­ri­ence with these mon­keys, since I’ve been throw­ing those descrip­tors around through­out the entire post. Astound­ing. let’s go with that. The mon­keys were sim­ply at peace enjoy­ing their baths. They either weren’t ful­ly aware of or ful­ly didn’t care about all the guests around them snap­ping away on their cam­eras. Did we not have a train to Kyoto to catch, we could’ve spent hours star­ing at these love­ly creatures.

We ran the wind­ing paths back to our hotel shut­tle. They brought our bags and took us to the train sta­tion just in time to start mak­ing our way south to Kyoto. We had a long jour­ney back and a lot more of Japan to expe­ri­ence, but were still in awe at every­thing we had seen and done in just two days. We had so much to talk about and relive. We also had a lot more Break­ing Bad to get through.

Our next post will see us mak­ing our way through Kyoto, Osa­ka, And Fukuo­ka. You can find that post here!