Yamanashi

I tried to book a train to Fuji as my phone said it could get the whole way there but it would only allow me to book up to Otsuki even though the train continues on. Turns out the part where it continues is owned by another company and is chargeable, I was able to stay on the train but needed to pay the conductor to continue on though I lost my seat and sat on the ground for the second half. It only cost an extra $10 to do that last section.
I got off and walked up to the pergola first as that was one of the major tourist spots. There were a fair number of stairs, my video was only half of them and apparently you can continue much further up the mountain if you wished but I didn't feel up for that. Up the top was quite busy with multiple lines for photo spots. It was a nice beautiful day and view but with all the people around it was not a very calm place.
I got back down and found a food cart which I grabbed a rainbow 🌈 cheese dog from. It was basically just mozzarella with food colouring but I had seen other people order them and felt I should give it a go.
I started walking from there towards Fuji and to see where it would take me. There were lots of Yakitori places and signs in english saying to be careful taking photos from the middle of the road so I assume this was a popular spot as the road aligned with Fuji.
It must have snowed recently as there were signs of it and frost out of the sun.
I grabbed myself a curry lunch which was decent enough and then headed to a local onsen for a look.
The onsen is called Sensui and has a few baths/sauna/cold pools. There was a list of all the minerals which the baths contained but was in kanji and I didn't have my phone to allow me to translate. The outside baths were volcanic rock and a view of Fuji which was nice. I did a few laps and then used my little towel to also dry myself. I have noticed at onsens you don't properly dry yourself, instead just a ringed out wash cloth to remove the majority. It's not actually that bad and have gotten better with this style.
I then bussed back to the train and just jumped on but for some reason it cost $17 this time. I again didn't have a seat but sat with a guy in the hallway until we got to the jrsection. At that point the 3 car carriage joined a 7 car carriage to continue onto Tokyo and there were plenty of seats.
It was interesting to see how the two trains joined and then a passageway opened up between what was originally the front/back of each of the trains.
When I got back to Shibuya I found them working on the yamanote line which is the main circle line in Tokyo. They had to replace the tracks which was done in 2 days using a lot of man power. The shot I took was just one section but there were multiple which had this many workers all working on top of each other.Read more