I was just reminiscing about the night my friends and I stayed at a hotel called Konansou at the foot of Mt. Fuji and wanted to edit just this one picture while it was on my mind. My boyfriend, Jack, and our friend Nik and I had just spent the day on a Viator tour of Mt. Fuji that also included a ferry ride across Lake Ashinoko and a cable car ride on the Hakone Ropeway up the side of another mountain to catch more views of Mt. Fuji.
We didn’t quite understand when we booked the tour that Lake Ashi is an hour from Mt. Fuji and that to get back to Konansou for the night, we’d either need to spend four hours switching from different forms of public transportation or take a cab. We had an amazing tour guide, Yuoko, who mapped out the route for us out of the kindness of her heart, but in the end, we decided to take a cab, which she called for us out of the kindness of her heart. And then she also gave directions to the cab driver when he didn’t understand our very, very sad Japanese pronunciation.
So we were riding from Lake Ashi back to Mt. Fuji with a very nice taxi driver with the lace-covered seats, watching the meter go up and up and up. We estimated the ride would cost us about $90, which split between three people amounted to next to nothing compared to the $500-a-night hotel where we were about to stay.
TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS LATER, the cab stopped in front of the hotel. But we had this view across Lake Kawaguchi, so it felt worth it. But we’ll probably do a better job of figuring out where our tour ends on the next trip.