We observed that many hotels in the area offer shuttle bus services that bring guests from Kawaguchiko Station to their property. In fact, there’s even a bus bay – specifically Bay 10 – that is a designated pick-spot for hotel shuttle bus services. Our place of stay – Hotel Regina Kawaguchiko – offers the same service, with the first bus leaving the hotel for the station at 8:00AM at 30 minute timings till 3PM and on demand thereafter. We took the first bus out on Day 20 morning and made it in time to the station for a 8:10AM bus to take us to Mt. Fuji Panoramic Ropeway.
It was a short 5 minute ride from Kawaguchiko Station to the Mt. Fuji Panoramic Ropeway station, and the ride was covered by our 3 day pass. The ropeway service actually only starts at 9:00AM, but our research earlier on had revealed that queues to go up to the observation deck start early and form really fast. However, even though we arrived well before the service start time, there was another big group of Taiwanese tourists who’d also arrived by coach at the same time we did, and by 8:20AM, a queue of almost 30 people had formed behind us (Quick note: we suspect they were Taiwanese because we overheard them scoffing at mainland Chinese!). Thankfully, the ropeway service actually started early, and by 8:40AM and after a short 3 minute ropeway ride, we were up on the observation deck for a unimpeded views of Mt. Fuji and Kawaguchiko town around it.
The sunlight though was pretty harsh again , and – like yesterday at Chureito Pagoda – we’d come at a less than ideal time for photography. I reckon the best time to come take pictures of Mt. Fuji from the panoramic ropeway observation deck would be late afternoon when the sun is directly facing the mountain from the observation deck, as opposed to it being on the left hand side. Don’t forget also to climb the short flight of stairs to the upper observation deck for a real 360 degree panoramic view of the entire area.
In all, this was a pleasant visit, and most visitors didn’t stay too long: you can probably just appropotion 30 minutes for the visit before you’d want to join the subsequent queue to head back down the hill.
Continued in the next post: Lake Kawaguchiko Sightseeing Boat!