Cave tour at Mount Fuji

September 20

On Sunday, we started the day again with a Japanese breakfast at the hotel. Each of us devoured 15 different bowls, mainly containing fish and seafood.

The weather was rather mediocre again. This was partly due to Typhoon Dujuan, which is currently moving towards Japan and will bring heavy rain and wind for the next few days. Fortunately, here it was limited to drizzle. However, the Izu Peninsula, where we were just yesterday, is expected to be hit much harder.

So, naturally, we spent the morning underground, visiting three caves on the north side of Mount Fuji, which were formed by a lava eruption about 1,200 years ago.

First, we went to the Bat Cave, which unfortunately isn't inhabited by a crime-fighting billionaire, but actually by real bats. Next came the Wind Cave, which surprisingly wasn't very windy, and finally the Ice Cave, which is slowly running out of ice.

Nevertheless, it was quite fun squeezing through the narrow tunnels made of cooled lava. At times, you had to duck down and squeeze through some pretty narrow passages.

Afterwards, we went to an art museum where we admired the magnificent kimonos by the artist Kubota Itchiku. The museum also had a really lovely park. The interior exhibition rooms were also very elaborate and artistically designed. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of this because photography was forbidden…

We had originally planned to visit an open-air agricultural museum afterwards. However, it started to rain quite heavily on the way there. We didn't let that completely deter us, though, and strolled around the town for a bit. Of course, we also bought some Japanese sweets.

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and thus back to the now well-established evening program: eating, onsen, sleeping.