Overview of today:
From the Kodama #643 Shinkansen to Shizuoka station, changing quickly to the local for Kanaya station. …to the oldest steam powered locomotive in Japan, perhaps the only one! I have signed up for the Oigawa Railway’s “Winter in Sumata” package. There is live entertainment both in and outside the train car. Arriving at Senzu station, it’s back to nature time. I take a bus up precipitous roads to the Hiryu no Yado hotel. An evening stomp in my new mountain boots up into the mountains, through a tunnel, and then walk into the scariest moments of the entire Shizuoka experience, bar none. But, I make it back for wild boar winter soup.

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Overview of today:
The new airport, lunch, and a sake brewery. Can it get better than this?
Then, in who knows what condition, I’m forced to walk the plank over the world’s longest wooden footbridge, the Horai Bridge. If I survive, I can be revived at the World Tea Museum.

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Overview of today:
The sleek Shinkansen Hikari #463 zips me from Tokyo station to Shizuoka City, where I take the JR for Tokaido post station Yui, to soak in the ambience of the old Tokaido road. I take a walk in the Yui Honjin Park and visit the Tokaido Hiroshige Art Museum, which houses ukiyo-e by Utagawa Hiroshige. You have seen the woodblock prints, but from the same place as he sketched them in? Lunch should have been the famed local sakuraebi, the cherry shrimp. Taking the train back to Shizuoka City, I take the bus at terminal 4 to Utsunoya-iriguchi, where I review a valley of old houses and cannot find a tunnel remaining from Meiji times. Another short bus ride and I am walking through Togeppo Saiokuji, a Japanese garden. Dinner features a yam soup mentioned in the classic tale of travel, “Tokaidochu Hizakurige”, or “Shank’s Mare”. I return for the evening to downtown Shizuoka and the Hotel Prezio.

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Overview of today:
After a morning onsen soak in the hotel next to Hotel Brush Up, and a great hotel breakfast, I am off on a long mountain drive to the small town of Fujinomiya, site of two spectacular waterfalls: Otodome, a single waterfall, and Shiraito, a multiple veil of falls. I chance upon one man’s personal musuem, the Mt. Fuji Museum upstairs in his gift shop, the Dan no Ie. Next, a visit to the Fujisan Hongu Sengentaisha shinto complex, a major site for the worshipers of the spirits of Mt. Fuji. These people are serious about their spiritual kami manifestations! Lunch is a huge plate of “Class B” yakisoba, the local fried noodles. Another drive over the mountains to the home of a retired politician known as “Former Prime Minister Kishi”. Nice house, and what a garden! As the sun sets, I visit the renown Gotemba Premium Outlets. Shoppers, set your wallet to “stun”.

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Overview of today:
The sleek Shinkansen Kodama #637 zips me from Tokyo station to Odawara. I switch trains to the local train to Shin-Matsuda, a small station, and then take a spectacular ride to Gotemba. First stop: a taxi ride to a quiet tour of the Kirin Distillery Fuji Gotemba and a polite 20-minutes at their free whiskey bar. Second stop: a short train ride and a thirty-minute walk to the Mt. Fuji Komakado Cave. Sounds tedious? Far from it! Back to Gotemba station for the long wait for the free shuttle bus to my hotel. Boring? Not so! The bus is full of people in a really good mood. What’s this? Ice skaters? Acres of free parking? Hordes of people milling around outdoors? It’s the huge Gotemba Kogen Resort. So this is what local people do for fun! Ah, and my hotel is called Hotel Brush Up, which is encouraging. It’s Merry X’mas lights, big time!

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