Travel With Phie

Today was a bit more driving than the previous day as we were heading from Magome to the 5th Station of Mt.Fuji. Total trip time straight through was roughly 4.5 hours, but we decided we wanted to see some items along the way. 

We decided to wake up early, well pretty much when we had been waking up every day thus far – 6:30am to leave by 7am. We woke up, grabbed our bags, and headed out of the Hostel. I put an ice in Nick’s bag the day before, but he didn’t notice until this morning. So Nick chugged his Ice at the car and then we began on our journey. 

Our first stop of course was 7/11 to grab breakfast and some snacks for the car ride. The snacks were our pretty typical snacks of Boss coffee, Rice balls, and some sort of a snack. This morning they had food trucks outside of the pit stop, one of which was a juice stand. Ashley ordered the Apple Juice and then soon after we had all ordered the apple juice as it was delicious. It was honestly more like an apple smoothie, but man it was good! Once we had all gathered our snacks and finished our drinks, we continued our drive to our next pit stop – The wind and ice caves. John and Nick really wanted to go caving, so we all caved and went. The drive was about 2 hours from the 7/11.  

We arrived and bought tickets to explore both. We started at the Ice cave. We knew it was going to be cold, but man did the temp drop as soon as we were about to enter. We went down and had to crouch down and maneuver through a tighter than expected area to get down to the actual ice part of the cave.  Once you got down was when you reached the ‘hell hole’, no joke that is what was written on the sign. It was a section of the cave that if you fell in, there was no returning. Once you turned passed the ‘hell hole’ you got to the ‘Ice Cave’ section. This section was really only around 30 feet long, but it was cool to see. Once we walked through we headed back up to the top of the cave and back to daylight. 

After the Ice Cave we walked about 15 minutes to the Wind Cave. This cave was larger in size, and had a bit more to see. This one, there was no tight entrance, but rather just a longer cave on the inside. It talked about how back in the day due to the temperature it was used as a refrigerator. The cave went further back then we were allowed to go as it was more spelunking than what was meant for the general public. 

After we went to both caves, we decided to take the nature walk way back with was a bit longer, but through a very nice Forrest area. We made some insta reels for Ash and then continued on our way. Once we got back to the entrance of the Ice Cave, Ashley and I (shockingly) got matcha while John & Nick got some hot dogs. 

After our snacks, we hopped back in the car and continued on our way to Fuji. We stopped at a lake and shrine on the way and here we got our first glimpse of Mt. Fuji. The clouds came in and out, so we were glad we got to see it from the road. 

We then continued into the city to find a 7/11 to do a little muckbang of snacks for the hike. On the way we tried to find the famous Lawson’s where you could see Mt. Fuji above it. After a failed attempted, we simply continued on our way to the 7/11 in town. We arrived to the 7/11 and did a HAUL. We got breakfast, snacks, snacks, and more snacks for the hike. These ranged from dried fruit, to protein bars, waffles, candy, and others. It was a true Muckbang. We came out of the 7/11 and looked across the street and there it was the famous Lawson’s that had Fuji on the top, so Ashley and I walked over to see it up closer. It was for sure a cool view and I am glad we saw it up close. 

We then decided we should find a dinner spot. We found a good looking pancake place, so decided to stop in at Fujisan Pancake. They had the fluffy pancakes. They look and were absolutely delicious! They took 40 minutes to make and man were they worth the wait. I got the ones with the most sugar possible – Chocolate Banana and of course it came with a side of ice cream. It was the perfect meal for a little carb load. 

After dinner (while breakfast) we continued our drive to base camp – Station 5. Since it was July 3rd and we were leaving July 4th we were allowed to drive all the way to the base. While driving up we realized that the road was a music road for a partial section if you drove the speed limit. At first we thought the car was breaking down before we realized what was actually happening. 

40 minutes later, we had finally arrived at base camp and went to check into our accommodations for the night. We had got a whole room within the hostel due to the size of our group which was nice. We thought the rooms would be individual pods, but when we put our stuff up the room just had 8 mattresses on the floor. It was mega-bed night! 

We dropped our bags in the room and awaited the arrival of Claire who was meeting us at the base, to join us for this adventure. She arrived around 6:30pm and we helped her up to the room. Nick went to go take his mid-term while John and I headed out to watch the sunset and drop some items in the car. I headed up to the viewpoint and the clouds had dispersed leaving a beautiful site of Fuji. After the sun had mostly set, we headed back in and up to the room. 

When we got back up to the room we started discussing the “big one.” This was not the best topic considering all the conspiracy-theorist had decided it was going to happen July 4-6th, 2025 and tomorrow was indeed July 4th, 2025. We got down a deep Reddit post and then decided it was too much. 

We planned out our next day and had all decided we wanted to be on the trail by 3am, so we could see the sunrise. This meant we were going to wake-up at 2:30am and be out the door by 2:50am. So around 9/10pm we turned in for the night to get some sleep before our big journey the next day. 

Goodnight!!