Day 2 - Fujisan

Hello,
Today post will be full of nice landscapes from my little trip to see Fujisan.
As much I don't like organized tours, sightseeing mount Fuji would be pretty difficult to do it on our own, so we decided that we will go with the group. After some research I've chosen Gray Lines trip. It was more on the pricy side (11,000 yens for one adult) but I think it was very good decision.

We had to wake up early in the morning, because unfortunately there was no pick up option at our hotel, so we had to be around 7:30 at the Akasaka Plaza hotel which was the closest place where the tour motor coach was picking up people for the tour.
We waited for the bus, and when it was around 20 minutes after the scheduled  time, we started to be a little nervous, wondering if we had missed it or something. To be sure what's happening, I had to call the agency and ask about our bus. The problem was that they had line only for Japanese speaking people (which is weird, because they organize tours in English), and I have never ever spoken in Japanese by phone and the last time when I've used my Japanese was almost year ago at my graduation exams..... I wont even mention my phone phobia, and that the only people I can call are my husband, my sister and my mother....  On the edge of panic, I've pushed the numbers on my cellphone, and slowly started speaking to the person on the other side, asking about the pick up.  Fortunately,  despite the stressful situation, the phone call went good. They told me that the bus was stuck in the traffic and should be any moment now.  The tour bus came soon after my call, and we went for the Fuji ^______^
Our guide was Mizumi san, a very cheerful lady in her 50s, with very good English ^___^ She reminded me sooo much of one of my teachers from college <3
After about on hour of driving, yay, before our eyes was spreading wonderful mouton landscape with the famous volcano! The sky was perfect and we could see Fujisan clearly, soo lucky <3333

First stop:
Fusjisan observation deck
Pleas don't pay attention to how tired I look... For the first 4 days I've slept only for about 4 hours a day >_____<

Stop 2:
Fujisan 4th station. Yay, standing on the holy mountain hi hi <3

Stop 3:
Hakone station, time for dinner. Then, by gondola to the Owakudani valley.

Owakudani is in a crater created by the last explosion of mount Hakone. There's a small hot spring where the famous Kuro Tamago (black eggs) are boiled. It is said that if you eat one of those eggs you will live 7 years longer, so of course I could let this wonderful possibility go away and we have bought one bag of eggs. As interesting the looked from the outside, after removing the shell, the boiled egg itself looked and tasted normally. I think it was for the best because judging by the strong sulfuric smell filing whole area, at the beginning I was a little bit scared of trying my egg.

I can't even express how cold and windy there was. Sometimes when the wind was blowing so hard that I couldn't go forward.... And as I said before this little creature just can't stand cold for too long time >___< Look how happy I look hi hi.

Stop 4:

After the valley, we came back by our bus to the lake, where we have eaten dinner earlier and went for a short travel by the "pirate" ship.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to see the ancient dragon from the lake >____<

 Stop 5: 

Odawara station. We have stopped at Odawara, so some people who bought the trip with the option of coming back to Tokyo by Shinkansen could change for the train.  I could catch glimpse of the famous Odawara Castle from the bus windows <3 First thing that came to my mind when I heard that we are at Odawara was the siege of Odawara Castle and Hideyoshi Toyotomi and it made me soo excited. Also at the time when people were changing for train I was able to take a picture with amazing Hōjō Sōun <333333

We came back to our hotel around 9pm and even tough, we have spend soo much time in the motor coach traveling from place to place, I have really enjoyed. It was very pleasant trip with lot of wonderful landscapes that my fairy heart will remember for the rest of my life.