Sad to leave Inn Fujitomita we set off to catch the 9am bus from up the road. They have a funny system here, you collect your ticket at the second door on the bus and pay the driver when you arrive at your destination. Your ticket is a number and it flashes on an electronic display, each time it passes through a stop the number moves to the next price. The first bus was 1 hour and cost £20 between the two of us, this got us to Gotenba where we hopped onto our second local bus to Mishima another £15 for 50 minutes.

At Mishima we got the shinkanson bullet train to Nagoyo. This is something that Dave has been looking forward to. It goes at a speed of up to 186 mph, since the 1960′s there has never been a fatality, it’s always on time, and the train doors stop at the exact point of entry with gaps in the barriers for you to board the train. As soon as the train stops there are cleaners at each door ready to go on and clean, we’re sure there are many more stats we could bore you with but that will do. So the bullet train took us to Nagayo where we had an hour or so wait so we went outside into the city to find a coffee and get some air. Following this we found our next train to Takayama and we eventually arrived at 5pm. So from 9am until 5pm we traveled on two local buses, the bullet train and the wide view hida train which has big windows to take in the scenery. It was an interesting journey and gave us some time to chill out, play cards and observe the changing landscape.

We were now on the edge of the Japan Alps and got to our Minshuku at 5.30pm. Our room was a third of the size of the one in Fuji, still Japanese style and there were separate hot onsens. The men’s onsen was like a spa steam room and jacuzzi, the women’s onsen was like a bath and 4 showers in a space less than half the size of the mens! Helen was not impressed having already sneaked a peak at the men’s onsen. After a quick settle in we went out in search of a little Mexican place recommended in the Lonely Planet. It was very quiet out and about and little appeared to be open. We did eventually spot the sign for Chapala though and entered a cosy wooden shack where we found our first travel buddies!! Ivan and Kim sat in the corner and we started chatting away.

We spent the evening exchanging our tales of Japan so far and we found out they are on their honeymoon here for 4 weeks. Congratulations to them!! We all sampled the small portions of food at Chapala and arranged to meet for dinner the following night. They were going on a tour to a nearby World heritage site and we decided on exploring the morning markets, the temple and would go for a walk up to a ruin. Hot chocolate back at the room and we were ready for bed.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)