Mt. Foggy

Regardless of how much rain we had in Hong Kong, yesterday was probably the worst day of weather that we've had on the entire trip. Everything we tried to do didn't seem to work out. Our trip out to Mt. Fuji took about an hour more than it was supposed to because we got stuck in traffic induced by a three-car accident. Then we found out that we couldn't go up to the highest lookout because it had snowed the night before. As a result, the closest we got to Mt. Fuji was the first picture below; so at least we can say that we saw the top (kind of!).

We then drove another hour to the resort town of Hakone where we ate lunch and then took a cruise on the largest lake in the area. We were supposed to take a sky ride through the area, but of course that was closed because of the weather. They took us to this area where you're supposed to see the vapors of the hot springs come out of the ground and where they make black hard-boiled eggs in the sulfur springs. Needless to say, we didn't see anything; but we certainly smelled the sulfur!

Even if it weren't foggy, we probably wouldn't have seen anything because we were trying to deal with the 50-60 MPH winds that we faced up there as well. As you can see, we had many umbrella casualties from the wind. I'd imagine that the Sunshine City Prince Hotel will be reluctant to lend any more umbrellas to Duquesne students! On the way back to the hotel, we got stuck in more accident backup; coupled with the rush-hour Tokyo traffic, this made the trip home last about three hours!