Trip to Gotenba

Jan 3 & 4 - 2009

As been planned with friends from Keio University ( juniors & senior of my wife during her Degree & Masters ,,, friends from my university are away from Japan that time,, most of them return & work in Malaysia, who remains in Japan also was in Malaysia that time ). Our meeting point with them is at a cottage area an gotenba called Otome Shinrin Park (乙女森林公園第2キャンプ場). It's a camping area & cottages.
It was about 260km journey from our house in Nagoya and we move out for the trip at 6:30 in the morning.

This shot was taken at a near by &-eleven near our house after bought some coffee and tit-bits while driving. Since that new year holiday in Japan is one of the long holiday in a year calendar, a missive traffic jam on the highway also in our mind. Means that even for a 260km trip, it might take a very long time to arrive.
From Nagoya we took the normal road until Toyota city and from there we took the Tomei Expressway. The highway still smooth and less traffic until we reach our first stop at Hamana-ko parking area. The parking was almost full.

Eirfan at Hamana-ko Parking Area.

Hamana-ko(Lake Hamana) is a huge lake just beside the sea and the parking area is located just beside the lake and can see the view towards the lake. The parking area is marked as "A" and the highway is green in colour.


for larger map

After done with the rest, toilet and breakfast, we are back on the road. From here the road start to crowd with cars heading back to Tokyo after the new year holiday.

After entering Shizuoka city, finally can view the highest mountain in Japan. Mount Fuji.

From Shizuoka the road started to move slow... just slow and not as the U-turn jam as I've been experience back in Malaysia during Eid ul-Fitr holiday. It's a lot worse than the jam here in Japan. The only problem during this kind of driving is when need to go to the toilet hahaha....

Finally we reach Gotenba around 4 pm. After followed the map that i've googled + guides from our friends that already arrived at the cottage. All goes well until we missed the entrance turn for the camp side and we end up climbing up the road that connected to Hakone. We went until the top and turned back after reach the toll fare gate to enter the road to hakone hahaha.
But we manage to view mount Fuji from there and stop by the road side to snap some pictures.
Then we managed to arrive to the cottage safely.

A shot after we missed the turn to the cottage area.

This is Luqman (top pic) and his father (of course bottom pic). The last time we met Luqman is when he was still about 2 years old, now he is already 6 and speaks Japanese with his father and Enlish with his mother. His father ( Hirman ) is our senior and he is working at Hitachi factory near Yokohama.

The main agenda of the night, the menu for the dinner are various type of nabe & fried noodles. Eifran also already get along with one of the junior that we first met ( they cane to Japan after we left ).

Eirfan also already get along with our junior's son, Nazran. Nazran is same age as Yuri.

The interior view of one of the cottage. Taken while waiting for the sunrise and hoping to see mount Fuji under the sunshine..but there are too much clouds.

The view of Mount Fuji from the cottage.

No wonder the night was very cold and freezing

Us in front of the cottage with Mt. Fuji as the background

All the members just before check out.

My kids with Mt. Fuji





Eirfan taking Mt. Fuji picture


Just after everyone separated, we stop here for the view of Gotenba & Mt. Fuji, but Yuri & Eiqmal was sleeping and only Eirfan got this shot.


Before returning back to Nagoya, we decided to go for some sight seeing in Gotenba area and we joined with Hirman's family for the event.


Yuri & Eirfan get along with Luqman very well.


As usual Eiqmal can't join his brother & sister yet.

Candid shot while they are amazed with the fountain.

After visiting few places at Gotenba, we decided to head back to Nagoya. Most of the members went to the outlet park here at Gotenba. It's another outlet which under the same company with Toki Outlets. Due to we already went a lot to outlets back in December and assuming the outlet will be very crowed we passed it.

On the way back there was an accident on the highway and we decided to get down from the highway and took the normal road until we passed the accident point and finally arrived to Nagoya just before midnight.