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Getting to Mt. Fuji
Another Grey Line tour, this time to the
Mt. Fuji area. That's about
3 hours bus ride from Tokyo, so we had plenty of time to listen to
the guide on the way. Our guide was Miyuki ("Call me Mickey"), a lively
and entertaining feminist. Japan needs feminists. They are woefully
short of them, and there are still many entrenched traditions to fight.
Among the topics she covered on the various bus journeys between stops
were:
Kanji. She showed us pictures of the basic ones, and had us guess what they meant. For instance, with Sun, Moon and Paddy Field, you could more or less see how the kanji derived from the shape of the object described. Kanji combined, like Woman + Old = Grandmother. And then things got a bit more abstract, for instance if you put together three of the kanji for "woman" it means "noisy".
Traditional life. She covered the standard stuff, like living rooms doubling up as bedrooms and taking shoes off before entering any room that has tatami mats. Then she went into the more obscure stuff, such as the fact that not only do Japanese families share bath water (so you don't use soap in the bath), but there is a specific order in which you get to use it. So the first user, who gets the cleanest water is the father, followed by his heir (the eldest son), then the grandfather, any other sons, the grandmother, the daughters and finishing with the mother.
Myths and legends. Mt. Fuji is considered sacred to many Japanese. There is even a sect dedicated to it. The story goes that the mountain was inhabited by a powerful female spirit. One day she noticed that another nearby mountain, inhabited by a rival spirit, was taller that Mt. Fuji, so she caused it to blow its top, leaving herself reigning supreme. Fuji is the national symbol of Japan. Japan (Nippon in Japanese) means the land of the rising sun, and it is the rising sun that the red dot on their flag represents.
Mt. Fuji
Climbing Mt. Fuji is like travelling through the seasons. At the base
it is almost tropical, with bamboo lining the winding road. As you
make your way up the hairpins the seasons turns, becoming more like
an English autumn full of colourful deciduous trees. Higher still
and the landscape merges into a Scottish winter, all bare branches
and conifers looming out of the mist. As you reach Staging Point
Five even the conifers die off, many knocked down in great swathes
by typhons, and you are left with a black arid landscape, full of
crumbly pumice and no living thing except the pilgrims toiling upwards.
Finally, at the very summit, is a crowning glory of clean pure snow.
We didn't get that far, as the summit is only open for two months during
the summer, but we did get above cloud level. There is a famous series
of colour woodcut prints by Katsushika Hokusai, "36 Views of Mount Fuji".
The following is our attempt:
Lakeside Restaurant
Disappointing.
Hakone Sky Gondola
Not a bad view, but basically a way to get to:
Owakudani Valley
Rather dramatically nick named "Hell", this valley was a sulphur mine,
collecting the naturally exuded results of the smoking volcanic vents.
The whole area smelt of rotten eggs, and the locals played on this by
selling eggs hard boiled in the hot springs.
Boat Cruise on Lake Hakone
Now this was funny for two reasons. Firstly because the cruise ship
was done up as a Spanish Galleon, for no readily apparent reason,
complete with fake guns, figureheads, sails and plaster cabin boys in
the rigging.
Secondly because the commentary tape was about 20 seconds out of synch
with the position of the ship through out the cruise. So it would go
past a red shrine entrance sunk in the water with no explanation at
all. Then, around the corner by a magnificent hotel, it would explain
that this was the location where an itinerant priest subdued a dragon
and the locals built this as a result. Then, around another corner
in a fairly blank and dismal bay it suddenly announced that this was
where the Japanese government decided to host Bill Clinton.
Talking of Clinton, the following story was related to us by Miyuki with
quite a bit of glee. Apparently the Japanese prime minister of the time
didn't speak very good english, so had rehearsed what he was meant to say
on first meeting Clinton in public. But he got so flustered that instead
of saying "How are you?" he said "Who are you?". Clinton, thinking fast
on his feet, and well used to TV cameras, replied ad-lib "I'm Hilary's
husband" to which the poor Japanese Prime Minister, continuing with the
original script said, "Yes, me too".
Bullet Train
The shinkansen or Bullet Train can travel at up to 443 km/h. Certainly
it was the fastest I've ever traveled on land. The sticker on the side
of the train reads "Ambitious Japan". It's correct.
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