Weekend in Yamanashi prefecture

Hello,

Last weekend, I went to the Yamanashi prefecture with Ruriko and Yuka. 

We left Tokyo by bus at 7 am and arrived at Yamanakako (biggest of 5 lakes by Mt Fuji). Yuka had reserved bicycles for us, so we took our bikes and started cycling around the lake. It was great to be around nature again. The area and the lake are both beautiful. We stopped for lunch and later for tea and cake at a very nice little cafe which almost made me feel as if I was back in Belgium. We then took off again and finished our tour of the lake. Some family members of Yuka have an apartment not too far from there, right by Mt Fuji. Yuka's parents got there a day before us and came to get us by car. Yuka's parents invited us to a delicious dinner in a local restaurant. After the restaurant, we went to a local shrine which is really beautiful and peaceful. In the middle of a forest. We then went to the apartment which was amazing. It was right by Mt Fuji (which was acting shy and hiding behind clouds) and in the middle of nature. Yuka's parents are very nice and funny people and the 5 of us had a lot of fun together. We spent the whole evening speaking together until around midnight. We woke up at around 7:30am and prepared breakfast all together and spoke for quite a while again. We were meaning to go hiking around the area, but the weather was quite bad so Yuka's parents drove us around different places to show us this amazing Japanese prefecture. We first went to a place from where we were supposed to have a very nice view of Mt Fuji. Unfortunately it was very cloudy, but beautiful nonetheless:

Yuka's dad admiring... Mt Fuji:

View opposite Mt-Fuji:

Yuka's parents invited us for lunch and delicious ice cream and then we went on visiting the area.

We saw the 5 "Mt Fuji lakes": Yamanaka-ko, Kawaguchi-ko, Sai-ko, Shoji-ko and Motosu-ko (ko meaning lake). We went to visit the ice cave which is a cave that was used as a fridge back when we didn't have fridges. It was a lot of fun. Herewith a sign that was at the entrance of the cave:

Visiting the cave was exactly as described on the sign :-)

We went back to the apartment where we rested for a while before we had to head to the bus station to go back to Tokyo. I'll have more/better pictures to show you once we exchanged pictures with Yuka and Ruriko since they both have a camera, which take better pictures than my phone. Certainly when the weather is not that good. Meanwhile, herewith a last little overview of the trip, which was a really great way to kind of give a closure to my stay in Japan:

Bye