It had been our plan while in Japan to do some hiking. And while we didn’t really get to do as much as I plan, the ‘big’ hike that we did was pretty momentous – We walked to the summit of Mt Mitsutoge and back down again.
Mt Mitsutoge is in the Fuji Five Lakes area. While the ‘expected’ thing to do is to climb Mt Fuji it wasn’t climbing season while we were there. So we decided to try one of the walks described in the Lonely Planet Hiking in Japan guide.That said, you don’t really need a guide book to follow this walk – it is well signposted (okay, admittedly in Japanese) and the paths are pretty clear. We took the train to Mitsutoge, walked through the outskirts of town, and hit the trail.
View Mitsutoge-yama hike May 2011 in a larger map
The walk up the mountain was pretty amazing. At times it was as though we were walking through ‘Princess Mononoke’ or something:
(Sorry about the rubbish voice on the trailer! If it annoys you as much as me, just turn down the volume, you still get the idea.)
At one stage Willem was pretty convinced he could hear a Kodama (that’s the little white faced dudes you saw on the movie trailer – we call them ‘tok-toks’ 
)
The hills are incredibly steep, and a beautiful patchwork of various greens. On the trail itself, the vegetation changed consdierably – at times we were walking through thick cypress forest, at other types it was a mix of light vegetation. And things changed again as we passed the walls famous for rock climbing.
Of course, being in the Fuji Five Lakes area, Mt Mitsutoge is famous for views of Mt Fuji.
Mt Mitsutoge actually has more than one ‘summit’, and once we were on top of the mountain we walked the (steep, slippery) path to the highest summit – Kaiun-yama, 1785m – after eating our lunch. We then began the walk down the mountain back to Kawaguchiko, where we were staying. This part of the walk was along a ridge line. And by ‘along a ridge line’ I mean there was the path, and then it dropped down quite steeply on either side. (Grandparents reading this – don’t worry, it was always safe, Willem was never in any danger.)
Yes, it does drop straight off either side.
If you are in the Tokyo area, I strongly recommend a trip to the Fuji Five Lakes area. As well as a few other things to do there (which I will post about later) the hiking is superb. Even if you don’t get to ‘climb’ Fuji-yama, there are a lot of other hikes to be had. You don’t have to go as ‘hard’ as we did – we were out walking for about eight hours, but frankly, why not? Sure, it was long and in places steep, but there were retirees out doing it, and we had a six year old along.* I will admit that we were lucky with the weather – the day after our walk it rained and I think the walk would have been a bit of a slog in the rain – and mud. Steve of course thought that would have been even better, but he is weird like that.
*That said – I am really proud of how well Willem did on the walk. Admittedly he has the kind of cruel enthusiastic parents who will force encourage him to do walks like this, but he did it with the minimal of whinging and took an interest in what was going on around him. Frankly, he did better than I think a lot of adults would have!
