Kawaguchiko is my favourite place in the world, and so staying for another week in summer after a week in winter is a treat. One thing about summer is that the chances of seeing Mount Fuji are much lower, but still 40% chance in the morning, and so we woke up early just in case Fuji was out. There was no Fuji to be seen haha, but we got a beautiful misty look at the mountains north of Kawaguchiko.

We took our time getting ready as the sky wasn’t clearing, at 7:20am we left the house and drove up the mountain to one of my favourite photo spots, opposite Tenka Chaya. While we were there the clouds parted for a few seconds and we got a quick view of Mount Fuji in the distance.

One of my goals for this week in Kawaguchiko is to find a secret photography spot, very famous on Instagram and SNS, but no one would share with me where the spot was. I spent a lot of time on Google Earth and Instagram picking up clues of where the spot might be, and thanks to Yamap (hikers are better at sharing where things are than photographers) I finally thought I’d found the spot. It was down an old mountain road, I was uncertain about the safety of the road so we parked at Mitsutoge climbing car park, and walked 30 minutes down the old road.

We found it!!! I couldn’t believe I had finally found the spot, after two failed attempts in February climbing snowy mountain paths, it was down a paved road after all! Sadly Fuji had mostly disappeared behind clouds again, but I was so happy to have found it, and the road was in good enough condition for us to drive down next time. We waited for a while, but it could have been days before Fuji was clear again, and so we drove back to our lovely house.

Our next stop was Oishi Park, we weren’t sure what we wanted to do next so returned to a firm favourite, and had a little wander. Cosmos are one of my favourite flowers so it was great to see them starting to bloom around the lake. As it was still cloudy we decided to get prepared for our Fuji hike by popping to Donki and Mont Bell for supplies. We first went to Donki, which was as over-stimulating as always, and then made the drive to Mont Bell. Things went a little wrong as the Fuji Museum was having a dinosaur event and the whole area was absolutely packed. Even though Mont Bell was down the road their car park was completely full, and so after being stuck in traffic for a while we went back to Ogino to pick up lunch and dinner ingredients and went back to the house.

The clouds continued and so we wanted to explore on foot, we were staying in the village on the northern shore of Kawaguchiko, near to Kawaguchi Asama Shrine, which is where we headed. Kawaguchi Asama Shrine is best known for the Tenka no Torii (Torii in the sky) but also has a lovely shrine complex nearer the bottom of the mountain. This is a very popular spot for weddings, and has a number of ancient trees on site.

This was my seventh stay in the area, and definitely the best accommodation, the view below is from our balcony. We were in a quiet rural area, where people had larger homes with farm land, or private vegetables gardens, surrounding them. We didn’t get a clear view of Mount Fuji, but were lucky to see a little of her nearer the end of the day.

To end the afternoon we had a walk through the local area to the lake shore. The rice fields are beautiful, the rice was turning golden, and the paddies were full of cheeky sparrows that all flew away as we walked past.