A great view of Mt. Fuji from Fuji Q Hiland Amusement Park

It has been a long time since our last post. Sorry! It is not that things aren't exciting in Japan, they are, but I think that over the last year and 3 months we have sort of become immune to the things that we once thought were "odd". We have taken several trips and have gotten to see some really beautiful parts of Japan. Most recently, we visited the Mt. Fuji area.....and that was by far my favorite place to visit. We stayed at the base of Mt. Fuji on the very small Marine base, Camp Fuji. The area was beautiful, and there was nothing like waking up and looking out the window to see Mt. Fuji. We visited Fuji Q Hiland, a Japanese amusement park. The park had some amazing rides, in fact, Calvin and decided it has the scariest ride we have ever ridden. You turn upside down like 15 times. It was awesome, so I guess the 2 hour wait was worth it. Fuji Q also had some smaller rides for the kids and had a pretty fun Thomas Land! Carson was super excited to get to ride all of the trains. We also visited a small Japanese villiage called Hakkone. It is a more traditional Japanese village that sits on the hilliside in the midst of flooded rice patties. It was just beautiful. We didn't get to see and do everything in the area but we did go to the Venetian Glass Museum (the kids loved the glass forrest!) and to a really cool Hot Springs water park resort called Yunnesun. Yunnesun has a few water slides but it is most famous for its 20something natural spring baths. They have themed baths like coffee, green tea, sake, honey, eucalyptus and many more. We spent the day soaking in all of the pools. It was such a relaxing and fun day. We also visited Fuji Safari Park. It was a fun wilderness park that you drive through in your own car and you get to get up close and personal with all of the wildlife. We saw brand new baby cheetas, they were so tiny and so cute. Our day trips have been put on hold due to the rainy season. It rains for like 6 straight weeks here in Japan which makes it hard to go out and about. We are hoping that once things cool off a bit (Maybe in Sept or Oct) we will start going on some adventures again. We would love to hear how you are doing! Doesn't this just scream "Japanese Theme Park???"

This is the entrance to Fuji Q Hiland.