Day 01 @ Kawaguchiko – Arrival and Chureito Pagoda

To be truthful, we boarded our flight for Tokyo last night with more than a tiny bit of anxiety. Last year, despite coughing up the extra dough to fly with our premium national carrier at premium fares, our SQ flight took off 90 minutes late as it experienced some sort of technical problems just when we were taxing on the runaway and about to depart.

This time round, we were on a very tight schedule: we gave ourselves no more than 90 minutes from our scheduled landing time, and to clear immigration and collect luggage to catch an express train to Nippori station. We’d then need to make our way to Shinjuku Bus Terminal to catch our 11:15AM bus to Kawaguchiko. The reports of visitors in our social media groups reporting of huge crowds arriving and departing Haneda and Narita did not help!

Thankfully, our journey in actuality to Kawaguchiko on Day 01 was incident free. we in fact landed into Narita Airport 10 minutes early. And while there was a pretty big crowd clearing immigration – we’d flew out of Singapore on an A380 – it took just 15 minutes in the immigration queue before it came to our turn. Luggage claim was fast, and at 8:20AM, we were out of the arrival gate and headed to luggage delivery to forward our larger luggage case to our Kawaguchiko accommodation.

Still, we really did feel the additional transportation time it took for us to get from Narita to Shinjuku: something though that couldn’t be helped this year as relatively cheaper tickets we managed to get we coming into Narita rather than Haneda.

We were also a little worried whether we’d find suitable luggage lockers at Kawaguchiko, given the sheer number of tourists who make their way to Kawaguchiko to stay at least a few nights. Thankfully, this turned out to be a non-issue: the station has a separate area just for coin lockers of different sizes, and there is also a manned area within the station itself which will safe keep your luggage for a fee. If that wasn’t enough, we also saw several establishments right outside the station also offering luggage storage services too.

The missus calculated that we could get decent value from buying the Mt. Fuji 3 Day pass (SGD296 for all four of us), so we booked it through Klook and redeemed our vouchers for the actual passes at Kawaguchiko Station itself. To note though: the pass doesn’t cover all kinds of public transports: for instance, our bus ride from Kawaguchiko Station to Honcho Street wasn’t covered with this pass.

Our first stop on Day 01: Chureito Pagoda in Arakura-yama Sengen Park to capture that classic photo of Mt. Fuji with the Pagoda on the right side of the picture. The journey there was pretty easy: take the train from Kawaguchiko Station to Shimoyoshida Station, and from there, well, follow the crowd haha. Basically, most people who’d alight from that station are all going to the park. And even if you’re coming at a time where there is no one about, just follow the numerous signs.

Basically, the walk to the park from the Shimoyoshida Station is an easy 5 minute walk along quiet side roads. After that though is a 10 minute hike through steep steps to reach the observation deck and where the Pagoda is. There were quite a lot of visitors at about the time we reached the place – just past 2:30PM. The midday afternoon was right up and creating very strong glare on Mt. Fuji. Still, I shot what I could in these circumstances, and was lucky enough to be able to correct a good bit of the harsh lighting in post-processing.

Continued in the next post: Honcho Street!