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We got the coach from Tokyo to Kawaguchi-ko, which is on a lake at the foot of Mount Fuji. It was great to be in the countryside as we've spent the majority of our time in cities lately.
Although we were only there a couple of days we did loads and the weather was very kind to us . . . again! Fuji-san was hiding from us on the day we arrived, but he soon popped out to say hello!
One of our first discoveries on wandering down to the lake was that Kawaguchi-ko has concrete cows (or someone just put them there to make us feel at home!)! Lots of them! They're a lot more fashionable than the MK versions too . . . a variety of colours and poses! We also discovered a rather cool (and very fast) simulated baseball machine . . . think a cross between a driving range and one of those tennis machines that shoots balls at you. It was great fun (Graham is addicted already) and Gemma's rather pleased that on her first go she hit more than Graham did! Graham had to have a second turn!
We were rather impressed with our room at the guesthouse here - it was our first experience of a Japanese-style room, big and spacious, with low tables and tatami mats so you have a living room during the day and futons that you put out at night to turn it into a bedroom.
On our second day we woke up to totally clear skies which is apparently quite rare - Fuji-san had come out to play! We therefore made the most of it and crammed as much as we could into our only full day there. We hired a couple of rather posh mountain bikes and set off for the cable car, up to the Fuji viewing platform. We couldn't quite figure out what all the plastic animals were doing up there though . . . maybe they were in competition with the concrete cows?!
We then completed the full 20km circuit round the lake, it was beautiful with all the trees turning red and symmetrical Fuji reflected in the water. We definitely want to come back to climb it as it's not climbing season at the moment - too much snow. We stopped off for lunch and had a rather yummy glass of cold wine . . . mmm, sitting in the sun, view of Fuji and overlooking the lake - perfect!
To ease our aching legs we thought we'd brave our first onsen experience. After figuring out that men and women were seperate (!) and not knowing what we were doing we thought we'd just copy everyone else. First thing that was immediately apparent is that you have to be very clean - so we sat on the little stools and gave ourselves a good scrub (not knowing which out the three bottles was shampoo, Graham thought he'd make sure and washed his hair with a combination of all three!). The water was hot, hot, hot and we came out feeling very relaxed, but like our blood had boiled. Gemma was secretly rather upset that she didn't have a little towel, like everyone else, to fold up and balance on her head!
That evening we were looking forward to going to our first Irori restaurant. It was like an indoor BBQ where you sit on the floor around a charcoal pit and order a load of different skewers. We had a whole range and it was very yummy . . . but we were a little concerned at how long a fully gutted rainbow trout with a skewer going in through it's tail and out through it's mouth and caked in salt can actually flap around for - Gemma had to put a bowl on it's head until it had stopped gasping! The waiter asked us to wait until it had stopped moving around before we cooked it . . . as if it's treatment so far had been entirely humane! They sure like their fish fresh here!
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