For some reason I woke up like 6 times during the sleep. No idea why.
Wow, the place looked much better in the morning. In general, I feel like we got to start waking up early, as it’s pretty much the most beautiful part of the day.
We got served our breakfast, and it was very nice. The reoccurring theme is that I have no idea what I’m eating often. Also the amount of flavors is really cool, some of the combos I never had in my life. For example some meals are spicy sweets!
Today we had a mission that we’ve planned from the start. Possibly the only thing that’s actually gonna go according to the iternary - mt. Kintoki hike.
We were given a choice of 2 trails - longer but more scenic and shorter and easier one. We’ve hesitantly chose the longer one, as this is the one we stumbled upon first.
I’m not a super fit person, so it was quite difficult to hike for me. Well, how to say it… not difficult, but it’s just hard, idk. I had to rest often and I sweated a ton. The view occasionally got super nice. While we walked up, more and more people started showing up, as trail joined the other, more popular one. I haven’t said this many konnichiwas in my life before.
Almost entire trail was covered in bushes and trees, so only when we got to the top, we were greeted with an incredible view on mt. Funi and the valley below. I think this is the best way that I could have ever seen it properly for the first time ever. After such a difficult hike, it was very rewarding.
At the top, there was a small shop and a cafe. I got a little axe souvenir. Speaking of the axe, the whole mountain is sort of a shrine to Kintaro, who was a folk hero with an incredible strength.
They served Kintaro Curry Udon at the top, which smelled amazing. I just couldn’t resist getting it - especially that you could only eat it at the top of this mountain. It was really good, and I probably had the best view of my life while eating something.
I took a billion photos and tried to take a timelapse, which didn’t end up looking good due to camera turning around and me setting camera to too high exposure. We kept seeing clouds around Fuji, which we thought would move out, but they just kept being at the same spot. The timelapse at least explained why - new clouds just kept forming at around the same spot. It’s neat, but I couldn’t take a clear photo of Fuji sadly.
Getting down is so much easier.
We took the more common path on the way down. At the path, we finally saw the legendary rock that was broken up by Kintaro.
We saw the Kintaro shrine, which was completely empty. It was nice.
Near the shrine was a little inn, or something. People just chatted and had a fire going. It felt very relaxed and nice. We fed the chicken there.
After getting back home, I felt so tired I couldn’t do anything. I just layed and did absolutely nothing. It was actually hard to get up for our onsen time. The onsen was even harder to stay in than the last time. This time it also wasn’t awkward at all. The weather was much better, and we had the more beautiful side of it. It was nice…
This kaiseki was much nicer… It was different from yesterday, I was hungry, and I didn’t screw up like last time. Every flavor was really unique, just like last time.
I had to spend the rest of the evening going through billion photos from yesterday and today, and then writing the diary, also for yesterday and today. Such a chore…
