Sadly, today was much cloudier than I had been expecting. A friend of L’s joined us for the drive to southern Yamanashi, Fujikawaguchiko. It’s the lake you always see in pictures with Mt. Fuji. It was my first time driving on the expressway aka interstate. Nicely paved, but expensive. You just bleed money. A 1.5 hour trip cost us 3000 yen. We drove a bit further to Gotemba to pick up S, a guy from our consulate group who lives in Shizuoka, the neighboring prefecture. That means I hit up four prefectures in a weekend, whoop. It was so overcast though that we could only see part of the base. Cries. I will have to return. The lake was large, and it was again cold and windy.

Most of the fall leaves were already gone, so we didn’t stick around for the night illumination. We walked around the lake and checked out the shops and festival stands. Getting food was a bit difficult though because there were so many people everywhere, the wait times were insane! We finally ended up eating at around 2 pm at a hoto restaurant. I had pumpkin hoto, a traditional Yamanashi dish which has thicker noodles than udon and a more creamier based broth. So delicious! Plus I was so hungry at that point. We stared across the lake where Mt. Fuji would have been. I feel like photoshopping it in haha. I definitely want to climb Fuji-san in the summer when it’s open.

Afterward S told us about a free light show near Gotemba so we decided to head there via back roads to avoid the expensive tolls. As we approached, the roads clogged up and the cars barely moved. It was an insane amount of traffic. We finally managed to get in parking lot #7 with L asking the traffic guy if it was okay. Despite him saying that we will have to wait a lot, we managed to get a spot after 15 minutes. It was much warmer here, off the mountains. The light show had a 400 m long light tunnel with various decor inside. Impressive! We also stopped to get some food and beer. I had some sweet potato fries and chocolate dango. They also had carnival games. There was an aquarium and water and light show at the end that you had to pay for. As we had a long drive back, we didn’t do either of these things. S had gone here just the other night, but he kindly accompanied us again. It was cool to see all the light exhibits!