Lake Shoji

Next we took a different tourist bus along the lake to the Wind cave which was formed from lava flows. They used to use the cave for storage before freezers came along and there was ice in the cave itself.

After leaving the cave we transferred to the third tourist line to travel further again to one of the small lakes, Lake Shoji. Here there was another view of Mount Fuji and you could just about make out the reflection of the mountain in the lake.

We caught the last bus back to Kawaguchiko which took us almost an hour and we arrived just before 6pm. By this time we were thirsty so we found a lovely little bar for a few beers. At around 8pm it was time for food so we left the bar to find some udon noodles, a speciality of the area. This was harder than it should have been. A number of restaurants were already closed and a couple that we passed had signs on saying 'sold out'!.

Eventually we found a place that was still serving and we ordered tempura chicken and tempura egg! We thought we had ordered noodles too but they brought us the bill. Deciding that we couldn't be bothered to wait we were about to get up when the noodles appeared.

Having finished food we left the restaurant and waited for a taxi back to our hotel. Eventually we got to the front of the taxi rank and took the relatively short ride back. By now it was getting pretty cold so we were glad to be back.Read more