Mount Fuji

One of my bucket list of 'things to do before I die' is See Mount Fuji, and take a photo of course.  Well today I did. We hired a car for the day and drove to Fujisan, the World Heritage site that encompasses Mt Fuji and the surrounding area, including a large shrine to the sacred mountain and the gods who resided (still reside?) there.

We started seeing Fuji from the road many miles away as we approached, adding to our anticipation and the creation of many, not so good, through the car window shots!

We spent some time at the shrine (see extra) then moved on to the Dome Radar Museum which facilitated an excellent view point, though some of my shots were taken from car parks, service stations and convenience stores.

The one downside of today was the drive that Andrew and Noriko shared between them.  It is approximately 123km from Yokohama to Fujisan and last night was predicting a drive time of 1.5 hours, the route being mainly expressways and toll roads.  What the sat nav did not take into account was the fact it was a bank holiday Friday and EVERYBODY wanted to be on the road. The journey there took about five hours, coming back similar.  At one point there was a 50km traffic jam on the route. I feel sorry for Andrew and Noriko doing all the driving, I helped coming back by sleeping most of the way!

So a long day with a very enjoyable and interesting part in the middle.