The Private Islander

The next day I left Tokyo and took an excursion up to the area around Mount Fuji. It was well worth the hour it took to get there. On the way, I got a chance to see a less urbanized Japan and how more common Japanese people live. Many more people in the country live in houses, and their overall quality of life seems to be a bit better than those in cities. Wherever there are building, however, they are still crammed together like sardines. I took the picture below from a moving bus, so it didn’t come out as well as some of the others, but I think represents a typical Japanese residential area outside the city.

After getting off the bus, I took a cable car up a mountain. From there I could see the nearby Lake Ashi and Mount Fuji. It was also possible to see Tokyo from the lookout, though much of it was clouded by haze.

Also known as Hakone Lake, Lake Ashi was formed by the volcanic activity of Mount Fuji. In the photo you can see a golf course and several river cruise boats.

Further up the lookout was a temple. I later ascended the hill and was met with a fantastic site. The first few days spent on the trip were a holy week of sorts for many Japanese people, so many people flocked to the country’s many beautiful temples and shrines.

From the mountain I had a great view of Mount Fuji. Rising into the sky more than 12,000 feet, it is the tallest mountain in Japan. Its nearly perfect conical shape helps make it a well-known characteristic of Japan, and its volcanic activity has done much to shape the geography of the surrounding area.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Features . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.