Hi! Hello! 👋
I recently joined another day trip bus tour at the end of last month around Yamanashi area. This tour was booked through the same travel agency as when I also joined for a bus tour previously.
I have been looking into going somewhere I haven't been before but I couldn't bother about preparing for a long trip so this tour was perfect for me. After spending my years here Tokyo, I haven't really really considered going near Mount Fuji as I always tell myself I can go there anytime. But here I am visiting only after more than 3 years, on a bus tour nonetheless 😆.
Anyway, this is the actual tour the I joined, again with 
Meeting place is also the same as before but since this is scheduled earlier, we had to be there early as well. The bus was scheduled to depart at 7am and call time was 6:45am, so I arrived 6:30am.
We departed exactly on time as people as usual. I didn't eat breakfast before heading out so I was a bit hungry on the way. Thankfully, we had a stop-over after an hour. We didn't have long though, we were given only about 15mins. So we only had time to go to toilet and buy some food. We bought some Yakinikuman (grilled meat buns) and back to the bus again.
It was the start of the golden week holiday here in Japan so there was a bit of traffic even so early in the morning. But we had a glimpse of Mount Fuji every now and then so it was tolerable. The rest of the ride, I sneaked in some sleep.
I was excited as the weather was nice and I was really looking forward to at least get one picture with Mount Fuji in the background. A few hours later, we arrived at our first destination. The Peter Rabbit English Garden. Here, we were given an hour to spend and roam around the area. The sun was up and the flowers were looking bright. The bed pink flowers are different varieties of ShibaZakura that blooms around spring.
Unfortunately, Mount Fuji has become shy as the day passed by and hid behind the clouds. I was disheartened as I was really looking forward to having a snap with the pink flowers. Aside from taking a couple of pics here and there, we spent most of the time lining up to get few pictures on the yellow door (which would have been nice with Mount Fuji behind if it weren't for the clouds).
When our time was up in the garden, it was time to head tor our next destination for lunch. The place is called Fujiyama Terrace just right next to Fuji-Q amusement park.
We again had an hour for the lunch buffet. I admit, the food here is better than Hilton hotel's buffet.
I only took lots of pictures of the dessert as they looked so pretty.
We were seated with (supposedly) a good view of Mount Fuji but still no signs of peaking out while were eating.
Given that it's also the holidays, the price is surprisingly cheap compared to the usual buffet within Tokyo. Though we didn't pay anything as it was already part of what we paid for the tour, we confirmed the price by looking into the menu displayed.
After an hour of having our fill, we had 30mins to roam around the area. The bus guide mentioned there are some shops we can take a look if we go through the basement. I was expecting some stalls of shops but what greeted us surprised me. It was literally a little town of shops that looked like French cafes or something.
The place was enough to explore for a couple of minutes. We can see Fuji-Q just right behind it. After checking out the place, we decided to get some coffee and enjoy the feeling of just being there and pretend that we were in a cafe in Paris.
We head to a cafe checked out some of the bread displayed, they were really cute.
While we were getting our coffee, we met our bus guide there and talked for a bit. She mentioned, she only had a sandwich for lunch she bought herself. I didn't know how to feel about it, I thought they(including the driver) were provided with lunch as it's a whole day trip after all. She did mention the bus was full and there were 46 participants, so providing lunch for the staff wouldn't be so unreasonable right? The driver had to refuel that time too so I don't even know if he had some lunch. Anyway, I got so worked up about it. 😤
Moving on, we just spent our remaining time sitting outside and rested before we hit the road again.
After another bus ride, our last stop was actually going to Mount Fuji's 5th station. I heard people may start climbing Mount Fuji from here. Well another expectation vs reality check. I expected to see some climbers from there but there were a lot of travelers like us instead lol. Our guide told us we'll receive an omiyage from a shop as part of the tour first and then we can have 30 mins (or was it 15mins) for this area. I thought that wasn't enough time but we actually just took some pictures, admired the view, and then we were done. We even have a lot of time to spare but we decided to return to the bus early.
As part of the tour, we were entitled to a bit of discount in one of the shops around there for some omiyage. But of course we had to buy it through our guide so we didn't have to line up ourselves (she bought it while we were out). When we were back in the bus, our omiyage was already waiting for us. On the road home, I enjoyed this cute omiyage as pre dinner lol. Dinner was just 2 onigiri from a stop-over as we didn't have enough time due to traffic.
Thank you for reading and see you on my next blog.
Eating-Apple,
Apple
PS: All photos are mine unless stated otherwise.
