Day 20 - Mt Fuji - Where's The Pizza?!

In our grand scheme, today was our dedicated rest day. We decided against going to Thomas Land (actually called Fuji-Q Highlands), and instead spent some of the day wandering around town, to discover that we weren't missing much.

We had set our breakfast time for 8am, so once more we were rising early (how terrible), some of us *ahem* Dylan *ahem* awoke earlier and started to enthusiastically take photographs of Mt Fuji at 7am, the stock camera click sound like a beautiful lullaby to those of us not yet ready to rise. A lullaby which persisted, until it was pretty much breakfast time already. I got up somewhat more grudgingly than the artiscally enthused Dylan, but we made it down to the breakfast room right on time. Another Japanese meal awaited us, and we were challenged somewhat, as one does not typically feel like vegetables and fish in varying stages of cooking right after one has awoken. We made another valiant effort before making our way to the lobby, where there is a cafe, and the coffee awaited us. 

Worth the early wake up and experimenting on Manual Mode on my DSLR if you ask me.

Our private onsen, with the mountain in the background

Adelaide's demeanor summed up brekkie really

Once we had consumed the caffeinated liquid of life we made our way back upstairs to decide what to do with the day. Since we had to be out of the room for cleaning for a few hours in the middle of the day, we just decided to go out for lunch at 11, and wander around the town a bit. Fuji-Q seemed a little expensive and the rides just a whole lot of too much fun for Dylan, so we settled in for a relaxing day of lounging around. Since it was not even 9 at this point, we sat around for a while, with a great view of Mt Fuji, catching up on the internets, before heading out at 11, when the cleaning ladies came a-knocking. Our hotel lies across the road from the Lake, so we decided to wander around it a bit, to admire the views and pick up some more hot drinks. At a moderately overpriced but well-positioned cafe we drank coffee and hot chocolate and admired the løveli lakes (I've been getting blank looks all day with that one). There seems a very limited demographic to which the people of Kawaguchiko cater, which turned up shortly after we did in huge tourist buses. Kawaguchiko seems to have a more domestic tourism industry than an international one, and this was reflected in the many Japanese restaurants, souvenir and ice cream shops along the lake. Since we were now having two huge Japanese meals a day, we wanted to have something decidedly starchy and easy to eat for lunch, so the hunt for pizza began.

Reference to the title

Just outside our hotel!

Post Caffination Glow

It really reminded me of Queenstown in a way

The carpark was empty... for now...

The town was quite unusual with Mt Fuji in the distance.

Captain Sense-Of-Direction suggested we turn away from the direction of the train station, and head down a seemingly mainish street. Unfortunately this turned out to be a mistake, and in my attempts to head us back towards the train station where I figured there would actually be places to eat, there was a misunderstanding with the signs, and we headed in a different direction once more for a few blocks. Dylan maintains that he knew exactly where we were going. We soon realised our miscommunication, and headed back towards the train station. We were getting pretty hyped for some pizza at this point, but Kawaguchiko is pretty small, and doesn't have main stream restaurants. Instead, we made our second error, and walked past the station towards the promise of a 7/11. The 7/11 was not too far, but it was certainly not near pizza, and we got a few snacks to console ourselves before backtracking to the station. At this point we were demoralised, despondent at our lack of pizza, so turned at the station to go back to our hotel by the same route we had taken yesterday, planning to go to the konbini next to the hotel to get something more lunchy. A mere half block from the station we spotted a miraculous Italian restaurant, with pictures of pizza outside! How happy we were, there were moments of sweet rejoicing before entering and ordering two pizzas. 

5 Cheese Pizza... Mmmmm!

Two 5 Cheese pizzas satisfied our cravings, and we returned to the lake, Dylan stopping for some dessert at the konbini. Here, we discovered something magical, that I had pointed out previously but somehow been misheard on the topic. You have read in this blog of pizza-man, and its amazingness. In this konbini, they had something I had never seen before, chocolate-man. It is a chocolate dumpling encasing chocolate sauce. Unfortunately I was full, but Dylan got one, and upon first bite, was convinced of its divinity. Japan is so great.

Like a pudding calzone

We proceeded to have a very quiet and uneventful afternoon with Dylan watching Youtube while I read. This evening we decided to splurge a little and get a massage at the spa place inside the hotel. There was a lot of confusion surrounding the location of the spas, as there were two, and the information sheet we got was outdated, but we finally managed to book some massages for 5.25 this evening. After a few days of skiing and a few weeks of walking we had a few sore muscles, and the massages really hit the spot.

We were soon after served dinner in our rooms, and this time there was some lobster and crab that we really enjoyed. The other features of the dinner were quite similar to last nights one. For dessert we were given delicious fruit, with some exceptionally pungent strawberries. Dylan then went down to fetch some chocolate-man and ice cream, and we feasted some more.

Tomorrow we leave for Osaka, and will spend most of the day on the train. Kawaguchiko is a little isolated, so you have to train back up to just outside Tokyo before going back down past Mt Fuji to Osaka. Until then, good night!