06 Jul Japan: The Beauty above the Suicide Forest, Mount Fuji
Summary
We planned to wake up and watch the sunrise on Mount Fuji. Eileen woke me up & I exclaimed “OH MY GOD!” The magnificent view of Mount Fuji & Lake Kawaguchi was TRULY out of this world.
We met up with the remaining 3 kids, Pam, Elsa, and Joey at the train station and took the hotel shuttle to our accommodation, the Kozanteiubuya Ubuya hotel. It sounds ridiculous to be paying over SGD250+ per night for a tatami concept hotel but you’ll see why it was all worth it. Breakfast and dinner were included in the package and that’s a huge bonus.
Spot the bunch of crazy friends playing hide and seek with my camera. But guess what? Not doing a good job here lol. Friends that do strange things together, stays together.
The food was like fine dine or something, small portion but variety course. It was an interesting experience. We were kinda high in mood with the food and perhaps alil noisy even without getting drunk on sake.
We took a short walk outside our hotel and all we could see was a big dark patch of water and a row of lights from restaurants, hotels, and probably residential homes across the lake. Mount Fuji wasn’t in sight so we were wondering which side would it be at. I randomly placed my camera on the solid ground to try to capture the lights across the lake.
Took awhile for the camera to snap a picture because of the aperture thingy while taking night shots. When I picked up my camera after almost like 12 secs or something, HOLY SHIT!!! Everyone was curious about what I just saw so they gathered around my camera and they all went like “Whhhaaaa!!!“. My lovely Olympus captured the mountain which our naked eyes couldn’t see.
O.M.G
Reality 01
Before we ogle further at how magnificent Mount Fuji is, I happened to watched a variety show that mentioned Mount Fuji used to be a place of rubbish. A dumping ground by irresponsible mountain climbers, which piled up to shitload bags of trash. I was like nah how can that be? So I google and to my horror, I found this picture. Also factoring in the natural disasters like typhoon building up the trash along the lake way before the mountain climbers. The pollution was so bad that they even had a clean-up competition to help clear up the lake and it’s environment. Read more about it here.
Boy… aren’t we lucky to enjoy it at its’ clean state.
Reality 02
To top it off, which some might already know because of the movie “The Forest“, the foot of the mountain are where many individuals go to end their lives even till this day. Which baffles me enough to try to find the reason why they had to pick Mount Fuji.
It was said that, similarly to some countries, committing suicide is a crime. The family members of the passing will be charged with a hefty fine. In order for them to not burden their loved ones, they choose to die somewhere deep within the forest at the foot of Mount Fuji and rot away in the hopes that they wouldn’t be discovered & recognised. That’s kinda some sad shit story man. Can you imagine? Beneath this spectacular view lies so much darkness to it.
• • • • •
Anyways… putting the sad stories aside, we had planned to wake up and watch the sunrise. The next morning, Eileen was the first to wake up and when she woke me up, while my eyes were still half shut, my breath still stale and my hair in a mess, she drew the curtains which revealed the huge glass window panel and I totally forgot the state I was in. My first words from my mouth was a loud (and I’m hardly loud), “OH MY GOD!” because it was stunning as wtf! I think the rest were woken up by my uncontrollable exclamation. Just look at this already!
Mount Fuji & Lake Kawaguchi
And this just looks like oil painting. Poetic much.
We had to make good use of the day since we woke up so early and that we’re so popular the mountain doesn’t stop following us around.
Nice hotels need some loving. We care and share. One quick question… Ant, why your Oakley shades so crooked. Lol. ☿
We had really yummy lunch even at some small restaurant, Shokujidokoro Tsujiya near to the hotel. And Tripadvisor recommends & approves. We decided that we needed some workout to make ourselves feel less sinful. So what do tourist do? Take lazy strolls and do jump shots.
Because they tried and couldn’t synchronise as well as us. They had a simpler version. Hahah.
All the manhole covers with much effort. Naise or what?
Supposedly, the famous pictures of this shot everywhere on google are like with cherry blossoms but I think these bare branches look great too!
The question is
Did you notice a number on the mountain?
This post has the most group wefies ever in our entire Japan trip huh. We couldn’t help it because we so gangster.
Joey trying to catch the eagle above… not.
We were truly blessed to be able to witness the beauty of Mount Fuji and Lake Kawaguchi for two days so here’s one final picture from the train station. The only good thing about leaving is that we’re finally almost freed of the troublesome train and bus rides lugging around those bulky luggages. So to Tokyo for the upcoming post, here we go! To be continued…
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