Kawaguchiko was actually a lot prettier than we thought it would be - a lot of the guide book seem to think it's touristy and crowded, but for us it was actually quite peaceful and very pretty this time of year with all the autumn colours. We only had one night here so we decided to walk up Mt Tenjo instead of taking the cable car like everyone else. We were so glad we did - we hardly saw anyone else and the autumn leaves and gardens were fantastic. Also the views all the way up of Fujisan and the lake were really wonderful. If in doubt, I always recommend walking - we've had some of the best moments travelling when we decided to walk rather than pay the money to use tourist transport. The walk took us about 40 mins to get up to where the cable car goes.
Just a note about some of the words - yama is mountain but Fuji is often called san which is the polite term when you are talking about a person because Fuji is so honoured. Ko is lake. Kawa is river. I think guchi is relating to gate or entrance but still not entirely sure about that one. I've been learning quite a lot of the kanji as we go along but have no idea how to type them on here sorry!
Will try and do our section on Nikko soon - just haven't processed the photos etc yet! We had a really awesome two nights there anyway.
Kawaguchiko shoreline, just down from the hostel
Fujiyama from Tenjoyama
Kawaguchiko from Tenjoyama
Fujisan from Kawaguchiko
Hey you two :-) Looks like you are having a lovely time of it - I love all the autumn colours (we've nearly lost ours here and the snow is creeping down the hillsides, brrr...)
ReplyDeleteBTW, kuchi is 'mouth' and in Japanese they tend to alter the initial consonant sound when it is combined after other sounds as part of a word, hence kuchi becomes -guchi (island = shima, combined becomes -jima, kawa = river, combined becomes -gawa)
Great autumn colours.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to your alpine stuff.
We're interested in that part for a future trip.
Thanks for the comments guys!
ReplyDeleteAndrew - think you would really enjoy this part of the world!
Fran - thanks for that - that explains a few confusions I had actually! Have been learning quite a few kanji as I go along but sometimes they seem to mean different things! Obviously a context thing - explains why kanji is so difficult to learn...
Hope you and Neil and doing well and keeping warm heading into winter :)
Nice pics. Hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. A minor linguistic point - the "san" of Fuji-san is actually another reading of "yama" and entirely unrelated to the honorific "-san". *Everyone* gets this wrong (I did when I moved here) :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks James for explaining that! Seems to be a common mis-conception as I'm sure someone else told me! Would explain why many other mountains do actually have the -san at the end - e.g. Nantai-san, Aso-san
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