So, our first morning in Kawaguchi-ko. Knowing that Mt Fuji is more often seen early in the morning and late at night we set our alarms from 4am, an hour and a bit before sunrise. With our fuji view room we were able to brew some tea and set up the DSLR to take a time lapse of the sun rising onto Fujis peak.

It was actually the only sunrise where Fuji turned a shade of red (we got up for every single one!). So, when you’re up at 4 the day starts quite early and before 8am we found ourselves on the other side of Ohashi bridge (it was a 2 mile walk each way!). This is a really nice spot to shoot Fuji.

Once we had walked out 4 miles we headed to Toyoto Rent a Car near Kawaguchi-ko station to pick up our little car for the next few days. The first stop was Chureito pagoda at Arakura Sengen shrine. Sadly the blossom weren’t out yet (this turned out to be a good thing… wait until next time we visit!). The views from there are always spectacular though.

Now we had our own wheels we could travel around the five lakes area at our own pace. Next we returned to Lake Motosu, the star of the 1000 yen note, and decided to climb Mount Ryugatake as one of the staff at our hostel had recommended this. It was an absolutely breath taking view! At the bottom of the picture you can see a road, that is where our car is!

Next we headed to Lake Shoji, unfortunately here Mt Fuji developed a cloud afro, but the views were still really great, and it is a nice, rather empty, lake.

From Lake Shoji we headed to Lake Sai. Here you can really see the line of where the lava stopped following Mt Fujis largest erruption, the trees into the distance are all part of Aokigahara, the lava forest. There are few people at this lake and so it is a really nice quiet place to come.

On our way back to Kawaguchi-ko we pulled over in a random layby, jumped over the guard rail and shimmied down onto the beach of Kawaguchi-ko. The views here were lovely, and you can see the lava and also some unspoilt (by buildings) shore line. (That’s me!)

Back onto the more built up area of Kawaguchi-ko we found some sakura!!! This is what we can come here for, to see the magnificent Mount Fuji framed by the delicate sakura blooms.

For sunset that evening we decided to climb up to the peak of Mount Tenjo, which is easily accessed from the lake side, you can take the kachi kachi ropeway about half of the way up too. Here we stayed til the sunset and it suddenly turned so cold, we half ran all the way down. I think our first day with the car was well spent!