Herb Garden with views of Mt. Fuji

The previous post in this series is here..

After eating Fuji apples we drove to the last stop before lunch. A herb garden. Our driver told us he already had told the restaurant that we will be coming before Noon.

There was a short drive to the Herb garden as it is almost towards exiting the Mt. Fuji area. It was beautiful. There was an observation deck above the garden with a little hike. The garden was free and the deck was not. Given the time constraint, the group just decided to hang out in the garden while I paid and ran up to the deck. Did not do justice to the money paid for the deck. There were lot of activities there including a swing .. you could take pictures of swinging towards Mt. Fuji.. it was all setup for photographers.. clicked what I could and ran back in time to join the group. The photos from Herb Garden visit

A video highlight reel..

After we finished, there was a short drive to the restaurant. There was no one there and the menu was 90% non veg, this after telling our driver that we were vegetarians. The restaurant folks were his friends. Also this wasn’t the restaurant we had checked out and put in the email earlier. Told him to drive us to the Taj restaurant. He reluctantly did and went back to eat with his friends. The Taj restaurant had a fantastic meal for us. We had a great lunch. Then we called our driver and he picked us up to take us back towards Tokyo.

He gave us the option to be dropped anywhere else if we wanted to sightsee before going back to hotel. We were going to see the old tower. He suggested we go to the new one. He dropped us off and we wished him well.

The tower experience in the next post..

Mt. Fuji from Lake Kawaguchiko - Japan Trip Day 7

The previous post in this series is here..

We were up and ready outside the hotel by 5:30 AM. Our Pakistani driver was very courteous and told us that every 30 minutes makes a difference. Some folks leave at 6 from Tokyo and never even get to Mt. Fuji in traffic and come back. That is why he wanted us to leave at 4:30 AM so we beat traffic both ways. He wanted to speak in HIndi but not everyone in our group was fluent in Hindi so we kept telling him to talk in English if possible and he tried his best.

We drove a good 2+ hours to lake Kawaguchiko area with beautiful views of Mt. Fuji from various angles for the last 30 minutes of the drvie. Once we parked at the first parking lot, we got to walk through a flower garden with some amazing views. Also saw a dog in the middle of the garden. Have never seen such a beautiful dog. Eventually the owner came and walked away. It was just hanging out all by itself, a sight to behold.

Photos.. didn’t even have to edit them..

Video highlights reel.

We did a photoshoot next to the flower beds and lake and drove to the next parking lot for the next stop…

Tokyo Day 6- Ueno park and Akihabara Electric town

The previous post in the series is here..

We checked into the Tokyo Dome hotel, had chai in our rooms and came out to go back to Ueno Park. It was around 4PM. We walked through the same path we missed the previous evening. Turns out there were no blossoms. We had experienced the best of Ueno park the previous evening at golden hour.

The rest of the group gave me a look that could simply be summarized in one word “Thoo!”. Well, they did not want to disappoint the photographer. I made my apologies and we were deciding where to go. Our walking buddy had called us and asked if we went to the electronic city where there are all electronic stores.

We had no idea, did some googling and found that it was actually where we had stayed the previous day!

We took a cab to Akihabara area and found this LED lit crossing where they sold electronics and video games. Interesting crowd of people all with hair died in all kinds of gold and blue and purple like in video game ads. There was a large electronics store. We walked through all the floors and decided that they were as pricey as the US. We needed some power banks. So we got a power bank each and that was that.

A video highlight reel

When we came out of this area it was already starting to get dark. So we decided to go from here to the main attraction of the evening..