Day #2 ~Mt. Fuji~

I have to preface all of this by saying I have the greatest husband in the world. He made my dreams come true by getting me this beautiful little camera.

I love it so much but wish I had taken the time to learn it before out trip instead of waiting until we were in these gorgeous, scenic places to try to figure it out. Shame on me. By the end of the trip I had it all figured out but I’m bummed about these earlier pics. Thank goodness for fail-proof iphone pics, right?

Our day started with a drive from Yokota to Mt. Fuji. First difference we noticed between Mainland and Okinawa was the tunnels. Oh my gosh, Mainland has so many tunnels! The kids love to play the hold your breath game when going through tunnels…they never got tired of it.

Second difference was the rest stops. Okinawa doesn’t have any because it only takes a couple of hours to drive from the very top to the bottom of the entire island. Japan rest stops are awesome!

We also stopped for a potty break and would you check out that handicapped parking?!?! Talk about taking care of the elderly!

Ok, moving on to Mt. Fuji…We didn’t actually go to Fuji, we just went to get a nice scenic view.

There were soooo many steps to get up to the scenic view of Mt. Fuji. Rich threw Eva on his shoulders and skipped right up to the top while the rest of us huffed and puffed. I mean, I totally could have beat him to the top but somebody has to stay behind to take pictures, haha!

About halfway there.

This was as good as Fuji got for us.

Never mind that Fuji decided not to show up for us, these guys have fun no matter what.

We headed back down…

The town at the base of Fuji was just beautiful, surrounded by mountains.

When we got back to our van there was this nice Japanese man that struck up a conversation with Rich. He was excited to try out his handful of english phrases on us. As we were leaving I tried to ask him if he would take a picture for us and he very excitedly hopped in the shot with Rich and the kids, hahaha!

We didn’t have the heart to tell him we didn’t want a picture with him, we wanted him to take a picture of us. After I took his picture he offered to take one with me in it, lol!

As we headed back through the town we passed this little garden that looked so cute so we turned around and went back to check it out. After all, this was day one of sight seeing and we were full of energy and curiosity. That wore off during the last few days of our trip.

A few pics from our ‘around town’ explorations.

The garden

I told Eva to knock on the door.

We continued on to our next destination making random stops.

Not sure what this is but it looked important.

When you see a cool green mound you must stop and climb it.

Just a quick picture overload…the lighting was awesome!

We continued on to the house we would be spending the night in. We stayed in local homes throughout our entire road trip, a different one nearly every night. This was our first, in Nagoya.

I love Japanese style bathrooms! They make sense to me.

  

We ended our day with yummy food from 7/11 which btw, we also don’t have in Okinawa. This meal was seriously delish though.

On the itinerary for the next day was the train museum and then off to Kyoto to see the bamboo forest. Stay tuned…