This is the continuation of the diary of my RTW trip from November 2003.Kawaguchi is the central and largest of the Fuji Go-ko (five lakes).
They lie to the North of Mt Fuji and act as the favoured base for people climbing the mountain. Sadly for me the Fuji climbing season finishes at the end of August and climbing isn’t recommended after September in case you die of hypothermia or trigger an avalanche!
My hotel was on the far side of the lake from the town. It took about 10 minutes and £22 to transfer by taxi... so not really any cheaper than Tokyo after all!
The ‘hotel’ was a Ryokan – a Japanese Inn. When you enter the hotel you have to remove your shoes and wear slippers. The rooms all had tatami mats, which you can only walk on in socks or bare feet – not even slippers can tread the mats. The bedding was all futon mattresses laid out on the tatami. Futons don’t come with wooden base frames in Japan. The bathroom had a Japanese bath in it. By that I mean that instead of the long shape we are used to, the bath here was about 4 feet cubed. I don’t know if it was the extra height the water had to fall or if I was too heavy handed with the bath foam, but when I filled the bath later that day, the foam towered three feet over the bath top!!
Had I finally achieved some Japanese authenticity? Judge for yourself from the photo. And I certainly had if the tv was anything to go by. 12 channels, all of them Japanese – not even CNN! This would not have bothered me on any other day, but this was the first day of the Rugby World Cup Quarter Finals... I had 30 hours to find a satellite dish and a sports channel before the England v Wales match started.
That was a problem for Sunday. In the meantime, the weather was beautiful – the first time I had seen the sun in Japan. Did that cloud my view of Tokyo I wonder? The sun was very pale, but warm. The trees rustled, drawing attention to their autumnal hues. The water of the lake glowed a radiant blue, and Mt Fuji was present on the horizon as a grey, snow-capped, misty vision of Platonic mountainhood... too pale to come out in any of the photos though as it should be dominating the background of the bike photo at the top here.
Spurred on by the pleasant afternoon, I hired a bicycle from the hotel and headed off on a circuit of Kawaguchi-lake. At this moment the idyllic bliss of the autumnal afternoon came to a momentary halt. Earlier guests had already grabbed the best bikes, leaving me a choice of three identical steeds. So I was left with a gear-less bicycle with a girls frame, in a delightful baby blue, complete with a silver basket hanging from the front bars…
John Major once tried to sum up his vision of the country he wanted to create by talking dreamily of ‘maidens cycling to communion on a misty autumn morn’. For some reason this quote haunted my every pedal round the lake. At first I thought I might get away with it, but at one point half way around the lake I pulled up at a junction and I could see a woman in a car opposite pointing at me and laughing.
Shortly after, a serious Japanese cyclist, coming towards me clad head to toe in lycra, just shook his head as he whisked past in 34th gear. If the Japanese could laugh, I’m sure I would have seem him repress one. As it was I just read pity and disdain in those eyes of his… I did all I could to retain dignity. I whistled ‘Turning Japanese’ as I pedalled on.
Still, the ride was lovely and I discovered a little market in a village by the side of the lake. It was a local producers market and I lunched on sweet-potato cakes and home-made miso soup. Really tasty and the people at the handful of stalls seemed excited to have a genuine foreigner attempting to ask for two apples in really halting Japanese while tasting their food!
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