Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Beautiful View of Fuji-san from Sagami Bay

We took a drive out to Hayama today, only about 20-25 minutes from where we live. Julie found a picture of this place and wanted to try to find it. She drove, I navigated.

The first spot we found was off of Route 134 in Hayama, and it was a turn off into a parking lot called Toteishi Parking. It was behind a building and hidden, but there was a street sign for it. We parked and saw a bunch of people with cameras and tripods. It's a beautiful scenic view of Mt. Fuji (Fuji-san as the Japanese call it). One of the men offered Keanna and Sydney cookies...in the U.S. I'd say no, but here it's different. He was so sweet and kind even with the language barrier. On the way out we passed by Restaurant Don, and the name wasn't anything notable but the writing on the side of the building was! "First Floor Settle space/Second Floor Placer space/The topic of this house is Humanility and Performance." The view of Mt. Fuji was okay from here, but it wasn't the spot we were looking for.

We headed towards the Emperor's Summer Palace keeping the water on our left. Shortly after passing that and Route 134 forking with Route 207 (get on Route 207 for the view), we saw what we came for, Sagami Bay, the red torii gate, Hayama Lighthouse (also known as Yujiro Lighthouse) and a beautiful view of Fuji-san.


If you go, make sure it's during the winter time while Mt. Fuji is visable. During the spring, summer and early fall months the haze can hide the view.

3 comments:

newsjunkie said...

Wow those pictures of Mt. Fuji are amazing!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful!!

Kelsey said...

Glad to have found your blog! It's very interesting! The parking lot is called "Tateishi" btw, named for the stone in the water. The restuarent "Don" is very good and the owner Masaya speaks some decent English. Up until a few years ago, his wife used to hand-make the desserts herself there. The soba shop (looks like a shack) across from the parking lot is also decent in summer too..weird, but amusing Japanese guy owns it. Across the street from there is a restaurant called "The Colony"...seems like an old American house inside. The cute eldery couple that owns it translated a menu into English and have great pasta. Drive further down on that road (towards Yokosuka not Kamakura) and on the left you will see the "$5 cafe", the owner has a million and one types of coffee from all over the world, serves yummy cheesecake and lunch--everything is one coin 500 yen. Oh and he'll let you look through the cd library to pick out some jazz or rock that you like! I used to live in Hayama, so I discovered upon a lot of places in that area...great bbq spot in summer is Morito Kaigan (near the Denny's and torii gate parking)..good place to watch and see lots of harmless yakuzas with their kids bbqing on the rocks. Hayama/Akiya is a great place; I miss in tons! (Off topic, but I loved your kids Halloween costumes btw! You are truly a creative mommy!!!)