Day 4 – Snow Day

We had our Mt Fuji tour booked for today. It turned out to be the worst possible day for it.

Snow was forecast for the afternoon.

We got up and ready early and had a restaurant already picked out for breakfast. A 24hr Ramen Bar called Ichiran Ramen. It was a tiny place. You select your ramen and toppings from a sort of vending machine and pre-pay. The machine gives to a ticket which in turn you give to the cook behind the bar. It came out quickly and was delicious. Just the thing for a cold morning.

We got picked up from the Washington Shinjuku Hotel at 8 am and begun the two hour bus trip to Mt Fuji and Hakone. The tour guide Yabe-san was quite entertaining.

The first stop was supposed to be Mt Fuji Station 5. Yabe-san said in bad weather the road may be closed. Sure enough the weather closed in and started to snow. While this was a great novelty for the tourists, especially those who had never seen snow before, it didn’t bode well for the rest of the tour. We were only allowed as far as Station 1. As for Fuji-san herself – we never got to see her. Visibility was very poor.

As the snow intensified, more of our tour activities were closed.

The ropeway up Mt Komagatake was closed.

The cruise on Lake Ashi went ahead, but with visibility down to 30 metres or so, we couldn’t even see the shoreline.

The tour took us to alternative attractions such as Mt Fuji Heritage centre and Hakone Checkpoint, but were very lame to be honest. The best part of the tour was playing in the snow, which by the afternoon was quite thick. Jane took lots of photos and videos.

So when it was time to make our way back to Tokyo, we learned that both expressways had been closed. Yabe-san said we’re going to have to take the back roads back. When someone asked how long this was going to take, he took a big sigh, lowered his eyes and said “I don’t know”. It was like a living meme. The bus erupted in laughter.

4 hours later people were no longer laughing. We we’re still about 60 km from Tokyo in bumper to bumper traffic. Yabe-san in consultation with his company decided to abort the road and travel to the nearest train station and catch the train back to Shinjuku. People were losing their patience, but to Yabe-san’s credit he kept positive and guided us the rest of the way home on the train.

We then had to walk back to our apartment on icy footpaths. It was extremely slippery and was very laborious walk.

We made it back to the apartment at 1.30am

What an adventure!

We learnt later that that was the biggest snow fall in Tokyo for four years. It caused disruptions to air travel, as well as roads and rail.