Shimuzu, March 29, 2026

Today we are in Shimuzu, with Fuji-City being a neighboring city. From here, one can actually see Mount Fuji almost everywhere. Since it was still a bit hazy in the morning, we first took the train to the city center. Shimuzu is a small town with 30,000 residents. Hence, the public transport offerings are rather modest. There are few high-rise buildings here, and the typical residential areas consist mostly of small houses. This means perhaps 100m2 of land area, with the house, a parking space, and if possible, a little garden with flowers. And as we have seen almost everywhere, even seemingly row houses have a small distance, sometimes perhaps only 20cm, to the next house. So they are effectively freestanding.

In the city center, we visited Sumpu Castle Park. Here stood a castle, the first version of which was built in the 14th century. However, the local lord was defeated in battle in 1560, and the new rulers built a new castle in 1585. In the following centuries, the castle was repeatedly destroyed and burned down. In 1896, the Japanese army converted the castle into a military base, which was completely dismantled in 1949. In 1989 and 1996, the first restorations took place, and further excavations and reconstructions are planned. Now it mainly serves as a beautiful park, with lovely blooming cherry trees where the upcoming highlight of the cherry blossom season is celebrated.

After the castle park, the sky became increasingly clear and blue, and we wanted to reach a beautiful viewpoint. This is where our public transport expertise failed for the first time. The first bus we wanted to take did not work out. The timings on Google Maps were incorrect, the timings at the bus stop were off (yes, we knew it was Sunday), there were no bus numbers with Arabic numerals, and so on. Eventually, we ended up at a bus stop on a busy street, and then we just hailed a taxi that took us to a beautiful mountain viewpoint. Of course, in the meantime, the visibility did not improve; rather, it worsened, and nothing could be seen of Fuji. Only with slightly improved contrast and object enhancements did Fuji become visible in the cover image.

At the cable car next to the viewpoint, there was so much activity that one would have had to wait over an hour in line. So we instead took a bus on a very beautiful route back down. Somehow, the continuation of our journey by bus didn’t work again, after which we covered the last stretch by taxi. Thus, we found ourselves back on our ship, hoping that we might still see Fuji in 14 days.