Overview of today:
A misty mountain morning of wet snow and hot coffee. The bus back down to Senzu station and a one-room steam train museum of love. Return to Kanaya station on a local ancient train past the end-of-winter scenery. To Yaizu station up the coast, a taxi to the Sapporo Beer Brewery for a congenial glass of Ebisu and a tour. More rain and another taxi to the Yaizu Fish Market. A late lunch, and the weather is as cold as the fish, but everyone seems in excellent high spirits. Full of fish, I take a grateful taxi back to JR Yaizu station and onward to Shizuoka station. A bit of quick shopping and I take the Hikari No 480-the fastest way back to Tokyo next to a plane. More cold wind and rain, but spring is just around the corner.

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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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