We spent about an hour in Arakura-yama Sengen Park – that includes the time it took us to hike up and down – then returned to Shimoyoshida Station, and hopped onto a bus for a short 3 minute ride to Shimoyoshida Honcho Street. Oddly, this bus fare isn’t included in the Mt. Fuji 3 Day Pass we already had. Bummer. The distance between the station and Honcho Street seems walkable, and I reckon it’d take perhaps 10 minutes on foot.
As far as I can tell, it’s possible to get fabulous pictures of Honcho Street leading to Mt. Fuji from many different spots along the street. But many visitors seem fixated on that one spot that’s a short 50 meters from where we alighted from the bus – you just backtrack that short distance. You really can’t miss it: because there seems to be a perpetual mass of visitors all crowding that one tiny spot at a cross-junction. There were even traffic marshals in the area to ensure visitor safety, as – from a photographic perspective at least – the best spot to take this picture is in the middle of the street.
Unfortunately, I observed several misbehaving visitors from that country up north (as usual, sadly) who couldn’t care less about complying with the marshals’ instructions: they were heard in their shrill voices telling their compatriots to ignore the marshals and just stand in the middle of the street for their vanity poses and pictures. Sigh.
There is also unfortunately a relative lack of retail and dining establishments along the street: the stretch is pretty sedate. We went past just three cafes: one offering beverages and light eats, another offering hot beverages, and the third carrying soft-serve ice-cream. Our original intent was to hang around in the area for sunset photos, but we decided to leave early and head to our last visitation place for the day after spending an hour on the street chilling. We will be back at Honcho Street on Day 03 for morning photos, so the look of Mt. Fuji should be different then.
Continued in the next post: Fuji Q Highland!