Japan: Day 3 - Part 2

After Mount Fuji we immediately went further up the mountain to a lake.  The farther we got closer the more cloudy it got and the more snowy it got.  The lake was freezing.

We went on a half-hour boat trip to the other side of the lake.

 This was our boat.

There was a cool looking pirate ship at one of the docks.  It ended up taking off the same time we did and following us on the lake.

Snow falling.

The five seconds it took to take this photograph were the coldest five seconds of my life.

Freezing.

There wasn't much scenery other than the edges of land we could see.  But it was still a cool.  I met a lot of people on the boat from all over the world: Holland, Washington D.C., New Zealand, Alaska, and Malaysia.

The boat trip took us to the other side of the lake where they had a gondola that took us up even farther into the freezing mountain.

The view was hidden because of the clouds, but it was still neat because it was pouring snow and we were riding atop the tree tops on the way up.

Here's a short video of the view and gondola:

It was a ten minute ride up and it took us into a building where you could buy souvenirs and stuff.  They told us we had an hour up there and I thought are you kidding me!? The view was blocked from the weather and there's nothing to do!  But I went out the back of the building and there were pathways to walk and people started having a snow fight and stuff...so it turned out to be pretty fun.

My one and only white Christmas (eve).

Icicle unibrow.

Winter wonderland.

I bet the views beautiful on a clear day!

After about 45 minutes I couldn't stay cold much longer so I went inside to heat up and wait for the gondola to come get us for our return.

The gondola.

The sky started to clear up a little bit on the way down the mountain so we were able to see the lake and such.

Postcard?

Despite all the frigidness, it was a lot of fun.  Maybe I'll come back to Japan some day in the spring or summer and see it from a different perspective.

- to be cont'd -