Mt Fuji

Sunday 8/31= Fuji day. The myriad members of the Tomioka International Association met in front of Tomioka junior high school to embark on a day long Fuji site-seeing trip. We had to meet Mr. Imai first at 7 a.m. which was a bit painful. The tour bus was full of more foreigners than I ever thought could exist in Tomioka. Maybe its because I assumed they were all japanese until I heard them talking. There were maybe 20 chinese people, some Indonesians, a little Nepalese girl with her Japanese mom, and some other people who I didn't really get to talk to so i will never know. Then, of course, there were the Japanese teachers from the Japanese lesson aspect of Tomioka International Association. Trey and I were the most obvious, and only non-asian foreigners, but it was nice to know we weren't alone. I was also amazed because my morning Japanese class with Tomioka International Association has 3 students including me. The night class must be packed because there were so many people that I had never seen before.
Anyways, we all got on the bus and headed off to the mount Fuji. The bus was very crowded. The Japanese apparently had this genius idea to build extra seats that were collapsible, but when you needed them they could fold out into the aisle space. It of course takes a bit of forethought and coordination since once the seat is down no one can walk up and down the idea, so the idea never caught on in America. I had brought some Japanese flashcards on the bus to practice. Trey and I decided to ask the guy in the tiny fold out seat next to me a question we had about one of the flashcards. He couldn't really answer our question about the bizarre japanese object, because, as it turned out, he was Indonesian, not Japanese. He is a volunteer Japanese teacher at the night classes. He spoke better Japanese than us and pretty good English. Given those two facts, and the fact that we were all smashed together in the tiny alloted bus space, we decided to force him to be our buddy. We also forced his Indonesian friend to be our buddy too. Indonesian friend spoke less English though.
Our first stop was some mountain village place. You could buy lots of food and souvenirs and food souvenirs there. There were also some ponds with bright blue and yellow fish. One pond was a vary deep well looking thing that was evidently a spring from Mount Fuji. We drank water out of little metal cups. The water is supposed to be good for you. It tasted sweet and clean either way.
The next stop was a visitor center. It was distance away from mount Fuji. I guess the idea was that we would be able to see Mount Fuji and take pictures before we actually drove up the mountain. The best laid plans of mice and men. It was cloudy. The mountain was completely enwrapped in clouds. Every once in a while you could see a tiny slice poke out. I think the height of the mountain keeps the clouds there on a consistent basis. Only very rarely is there a clear view.
Next up was the fifth stage of Mount Fuji. Fifth stage is halfway up the mountain. It is the furthest point that you can drive up. The next half of the mountain is hiking over. There were lots of restaurants and souvenir shops in the area. The place was full of hikers stretching and getting ready for the long hike. There were lines of assembled hikers throwing their fists in the air and shouting the Japanese equivalent of "we can do it". We looked at part of the mountainside and the tiny, distant line of hikers winding up the mountain in between swaths of fog. Trey, our Indonesian friends Tiki and ???, and I ate a 5 minute lunch so we could get back to the bus at the appointed time. Turns out we were a half hour early, so we loitered around with the hikers.
But we weren't finished with Fuji yet. We bussed down the mountain again and went to a big lake. There were pedal-propelled swan boats, which reminded me of Boston. Mount Fuji was in the background. But to us Mount Fuji was just the giant clump of clouds. A few of us got ushered onto a small motor boat. We went on a whirlwind trip across the lake and back. The little Nepalese girl was in the back of the boat, being very cute. We enjoyed the speed and the views of the other mountains that weren't Fuji, which we could actually see. We regrouped with the land-bound ones and re-embarked for our final stop.
We drove and drove until we saw lots of little fields on peaches, strung up on lattices. Each peach has a tiny bag tied around it as it grows. The there were lattices full of grapes that had little napkin-like squares placed on top of each bunch of grapes. We ended up at a wine factory. There was a brief brief tour through the tiny factory. Then there we a tasting room. To be honest, i was really excited about the wine factory. Wine isn't very popular in Japan. Even though wine is my drink of choice in America and Europe, where I had at least a bottle a week habit, I have not been able to drink any wine since I have been Japan. However, I was in for some dreadful disappointment. Pretty much everything in the tasting room was a sweet wine or sweet fruit liqueur. Mind-numbingly sweet. The one or two "regular" wines they had there were pretty bad. They were flat and flavorless. And even though it might have just been a plain old red wine, it still tasted sweeter somehow. The tasting experience is very different too. Instead of someone pouring you sips of wine in wine glasses, you pick up a plastic cup and go to the numerous barrels set out in the room. The barrels are filled with ice and in the ice they set a punch bowl filled with whatever wine. you will your glass with a tiny metal pitcher attached to a rod. The ambiance was nil. Oh well. I guess it will be imported wine for me.
The rest of the story is boring from here. We hit traffic on the way back, making it a 4 hour drive back to Tomioka. Trey, who decided it would be a brilliant idea to only sleep for an hour the night before, slept in the seat next to me the whole way home with his body sprawled all into my personal space. I chatted with our buddies. There was a kareoke stint, with people singing old japanese songs. Our Indonesian buddies sang most of the songs. After we finally got back to Tomioka, Mr. Imai took us to a katsu restaurant. He made us eat lots of food and drink a giant mug of beer. The end.