During my latest Japan adventure, my Mom and I flew into Tokyo since it was a direct flight from LA. We planned to stay there for a few days to acclimate to the new time zone before heading off with the main goal of seeing the 75th Annual Snow Festival in Sapporo, Japan.
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While we were in Tokyo, we decided to take it easy since we didn’t know how long it would take to get over jet lag since the common advice says a day for each hour difference and Tokyo was 14 hours ahead of Eastern Time, but we didn’t have 14 days to acclimate 🙂 .
So we decided to book a day tour to see the nearby Mt. Fuji because that was something my Mom was interested in.
Booking
We booked this Mt. Fuji & Hakone Day Tour through Viator because as my Insta post above says, we had heard that when the weather is cloudy, you might not be able to see Mt. Fuji at all.
We prefer to book through Viator because of their policy of being able to cancel for a full refund until 24 hours before your tour. And I’m extremely glad we booked through them because that exact scenario happened.
After we arrived in Tokyo we saw that the day of our tour was looking cloudy on my beloved Today Weather App so we moved the tour to the next day, which looked sunny. And this might have saved the trip 🙂 .
The day we were originally going on this tour turned out to be super cloudy and the day we went ended up being absolutely perfect as you can see from how clear Mt. Fuji is above. So once again, Viator for the win! So now let’s see what the tour was actually like.
Pick Up Location
We took a taxi to the pick up location and arrived a little early for our 7:50am pick up time. Our Viator booking was very clear about where to meet and what time, which I appreciated.
However, after we arrived the confusion began 🙂 . There were a bunch of people all gathering at this location but after we talked to them, it seemed like they were there for various tours, not just ours and were just as confused as we were for where in this park they were supposed to gather.
There were several tour buses surrounding the area and it wasn’t clear if that’s where we were supposed to go either. So my Mom and I huddled together in the cold (it was January 🙂 ) trying to figure out what was going on.
At 7:40am a woman carrying a green sign arrived – I recognized the sign as the one for Japan Panoramic Tours, which is the company that runs our tour through Viator. Progress! However, that wasn’t for our tour. Correct tour company, wrong tour.
This lady spoke loudly and clearly in English telling us that she would start signing up another tour. No worries. A few minutes later another woman with the same sign said loudly that she was there for our tour. Wonderful!
She then explained to everyone what to do. She said to follow her and form a line based on your tour type. Once we reached the front of the line, she asked for the name on our booking and to see our ticket.
We showed the Viator ticket in their app and she gave us stickers to wear on our jackets to identify us as part of her tour. She then wrote on the back of the sticker paper our bus number and our seat numbers (8C and 8D) along with our departure time (8am).
She also pointed out where our bus would be. All of these instructions were very clear and well presented. I was impressed. We were told that our bus would arrive on the other side of the street in 5 minutes so we waited at the crosswalk and walked to the other side of the street as the bus with our indicated number was arriving. We then walked onto the bus and found our assigned seats.
The Drive
I really love that they gave us assigned seats – it just adds a sense of calm to what could be a chaotic experience with all of these people on a fairly large tour. When I was getting settled in my seat, I realized that I should take off a lot of my layers for the winter day because the seats were not very wide.
They seemed to be slightly smaller width-wise than a standard US bus seat, which for my wide hips was basically just enough space to be comfortable if I wasn’t wearing bulky winter gear, so I stripped down and got ready for our drive.
We left at 8:04am and were introduced to our tour guide, Masa. She was lovely and clearly explained in English what our itinerary was for the day and that there was free Wi-Fi on the bus.
After a while, an audio recording began talking about the history of Mt. Fuji, which sounded a bit strange and robotic, but didn’t last long. Curiously the presentation of information seemed to be mostly from the tour guide with a little bit of a robot voice thrown in, maybe to give her a break?
I’m not sure, but I would have preferred to not have a robot voice and even not know those extra pieces of information. I’m happy to sit on a bus in silence, which I was glad to see was mostly what we did.
However, the tour guide did give us more information about volcanoes and also about earthquake and tsunami warnings in Tokyo, which I appreciated. She also mentioned that you can drink the water from the snow of Mt. Fuji at the site we were going with your own water bottle or you can buy a bottle for ¥200 ($1.33 USD) in cash.
We then got our first view of Mt. Fuji and passed the biggest amusement park in Japan, which has Mt. Fuji in the background. That would be a wild rollercoaster view.
Mt. Fuji
At 9:30am we arrived at the station and got off the bus. We followed our tour guide who had a flag so we could see her easily at a distance. While walking towards the station, we saw a lot of pretty views of Mt. Fuji.
When we arrived at the station there were lots of people trying to get a similar picture with Mt. Fuji in the background. Instead, we headed towards the large fish pond to look for the Mt. Fuji snow water spout.
We walked through gift shops and street food vendors to find it. There was one man offering samples of green tea, which I was suspicious of since in my experience, that kind of interaction is often a scam, but it wasn’t. He was just giving out free samples and it was so good that I’m sure a lot of people bought it. Fair enough!
We bought a few gifts and found the snow water on the opposite side of the Koi Pond and the water tasted like fish 🙂 . We then headed back to the bus.
We were asked to meet there at 10:30am, but we arrived a little earlier than that because it was quite crowded and cold when we went to this site in January. Luckily the bus driver was still on the bus and let us in early. Shortly after, the rest of our tour group returned and then we left at 10:33am.
Lunch
We had a 5 minute ride to a restaurant, which was apparently at Shinobi No Sato Ninja Village and we were greeted with a man on top of the building welcoming us, which I didn’t expect.
We then walked through a Japanese garden with a gorgeous view of Mt. Fuji in the background, which is where the picture at the start of this post came from. We then went through the Ninja Village to get to the dining room and were greeted with a bit of chaos 🙂 .
Everyone from two tour groups had a buffet style lunch in this small room and it was unclear where the line to the buffets started or ended. So we just waited for other people to get food before we got in line so we could more easily see where the lines were and how it worked.
So when everything died down we got in the line that was revealed and I grabbed samples of everything. My favorites of the food offered were the curry with rice, chicken tempura and matcha ice cream. Yum!
We then checked out the gift shop before heading back to the bus. Once everyone returned to the bus at 11:45am we drove to the Hakone Cable Car.
Hakone Cable Car
On the way to the cable car we got stuck in traffic for about 35 minutes going up the mountain. While doing that the bus stalled a few times, which was scary the first time, but we learned wasn’t a big deal.
On the bus ride to the cable car we rested for a bit and some people napped. When we were approaching, the tour guide taught us about shoguns, samurai and the Edo period.
We finally arrived at about 1pm and were told that we were behind schedule because of the traffic jam, but if we wanted to, we could quickly look at a Volcanic Steam Vent Area before hopping on the cable car.
Our tour guide then showed us the way onto the cable car and told us that the best spot to see Mt. Fuji is on the right side of the cable car. We got in the car and there were super clear audio instructions about which station we needed to get off at (the second stop), which I appreciated.
We got off the cable car at the correct stop and followed our guide to our cruise. We then waited in line for about 15 minutes, I assume to align with the cruise departure time. We then headed to the boat.
Lake Ashi Cruise
Our tour guide told us that we should hang out on the left side of the boat to see the Hakone Shrine Gates. The boat ride was about 40 minutes and we were supposed to get off at the second stop.
However, the boat was super packed on both sides so we couldn’t see very much. There also wasn’t a lot of seating so we just tried to stay out of the way of the crowd.
However, after the first stop a lot of people got off the boat so we were able to have a seat on the way to the second stop and see Mt. Fuji and the Shrine Gates, which were nice. We then disembarked and went back to the bus and were told we had a 30 minute ride to the bullet train station.
On the way, our tour guide asked for TripAdvisor reviews and came to each bus seat with a QR code for us to scan, which I found a little pushy. I love giving reviews and leave them whenever I can, but this system was a bit uncomfortable. I would have preferred them saying to come to them if we want a QR code for the TripAdvisor review site, but maybe that’s just me.
Bullet Train
We then arrived at the Odawara Train Station and were given bullet train tickets with unreserved seats. We were then let loose 🙂 .
We were told that our ticket was good all day so we could explore the town if we liked before heading back to Tokyo. However, my Mom and I were tired so we waited for the train and then hopped on. The bullet train ride back to Tokyo was 30 minutes while the bus ride out was 2 hours. That’s a fast train 🙂 .
The Review
Overall I was impressed with this tour. I think it was a great value for money and I learned a lot. Also despite it being a large tour, I didn’t feel like cattle being herded around.
I also appreciated how kind and knowledgeable our tour guide Masa was and that this tour didn’t just take us two hours outside of Tokyo to see Mt. Fuji and then get back on the bus. I liked that we took the bullet train back for variety and a different experience. I also thought adding the activities in Hakone made this a more well rounded experience.
However, because I’m a hardcore introvert and am not used to tours with a large number people, this was a long day that took a bit of time to recover from. So brace yourself if you’re an introvert and not used to large tours like me.
But I think it’s worth it to see Mt. Fuji which I wouldn’t have attempted to do on my own given how relatively far and remote it is. I also learned a lot from our lovely tour guide and would recommend this tour to anyone that’s interested in this type of thing.
Conclusion
And that was my experience with the Mt. Fuji & Hakone Day Tour! It’s not my usual kind of adventure, but I thought it was a great experience for the money that allowed me to learn a lot and see some beautiful sights.
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This is a great way to see Mt Fuji in a day! The photos are fantastic. I find tours quite tiring as well, but they can be great and super convenient depending on your schedule. A very cool day out!
Can I make some jokes? left at 8:04am ?? that’s 4 min late for disciplined Japanese :))