The other night around 10:30 Miki sent a text message asking if we wanted to take a 6 am train to see a field of flowers near Mt. Fuji. I basically never want to take a 6 am train, especially with such short notice. But the fact that she was willing to made me wonder what was so great about this flower carpet thing. I checked out the website, which said that the flowers were at peak blossom as of right this second, and looked again at her message, which said that it was going to be super fantastic and she'd been waiting forever to see it.
A long train ride on a sunny day also seemed like it would be a good balance to the day before, a day that had somehow passed without getting any closer to the outdoors than the balcony. So, a compromise: we'd take a train at a more civilized hour and meet her at the Fuji Highlands.
We ran around Shinjuku station the next morning insisting to everyone in a uniform that there was meant to be a special holidays-only express train to Kawaguchiko at 10:20 and demanding to know what platform it left from. They all said there was no such train, but I wasn't fooled; Miki had said this train ran only a few times a year for this festival and don't be surprised if some of the staff didn't know about it. And I'd seen it on the website. However, even the special "temporary" track didn't have the train displayed. We finally got on a similar - but not quite as express - express train and wondered where that mysterious Harry Potter train could be.
It was a gorgeous ride on the Chuo line, with wild wisteria hanging in the trees and bright flowers and greens in gardens. At Otsuki, we changed for the Fujisankyukou train, an adorable relic painted with silly Fuji faces, for a slower ride through Yamanashi's farmland. A man next to us sipped sake out of the screwcap of a commemorative blue glass Fujisankyu bottle, sketching the mountain, as it went in and out of view, on the side of the sake bottle's box with a ballpoint pen.
From Kawaguchiko, it was a bus ride to the Shibazakura festival. Miki had gotten stuck in terrible traffic a few hours earlier. By the time we got there, a lot of it was heading toward us. (I'm telling you, going early is rarely rewarded around here.) And so at last, after a 3-hour journey, this field of sunny pink and white flowers swept out before us at the foot of a crisp Mt. Fuji. They smelled sweet. A sign at the gate rated the flowers 50% open, despite what the website had said. There were a lot of people, a lot of them old, but the openness of the space kept it from feeling really crowded. A huge, gnarled chunk of tree turned into a polished taiko drum sent up an echoing background. Japanese fairground food, including meat-wrapped rice balls from Miyazaki, made nice snacks.
People were setting up huge tripods to wait for the sunset, but the last bus left too early for us to watch Fuji turn pink.
The
Shibazakura Festival runs through May 31. The Fuji Highlands "free ticket" from within Tokyo on JR for 4500 yen covers some of the local transportation around there, but we still needed an extra 400 yen for the bus and park entrance, and an extra 300 to take the express train (rather than the included local) from Otsuki to Kawaguchi-ko. The official name of the ticket is the 河口湖・山中湖セレクトフリーきっぷ or "
Kawaguchiko Yamanakako select free kippu."
There are several
express buses from Tokyo to the site. The most direct goes from Shinjuku to the festival grounds at 8:40 and 11:40, and it looks like it would be 4300 round trip, though that may not include festival entrance. And you're on a bus for two and a half hours plus god knows how long when you hit traffic.
And that mysterious
holiday express train from Shinjuku to Kawaguchiko that didn't exist? It was all my mistake. That train
arrives at 10:20. It leaves Shinjuku at 8:14. Because the timetable runs from bottom to top. This is totally clear once you know it. Lesson learned - keep an eye on the arrows, even - especially - if they seem to be pointing in an odd direction. Any Chuo train headed for Kofu should get you to Otsuki.
It was a gorgeous ride on the Chuo line, with wild wisteria hanging in the trees and bright flowers and greens in gardens. At Otsuki, we changed for the Fujisankyukou train, an adorable relic painted with silly Fuji faces, for a slower ride through Yamanashi's farmland. A man next to us sipped sake out of the screwcap of a commemorative blue glass Fujisankyu bottle, sketching the mountain, as it went in and out of view, on the side of the sake bottle's box with a ballpoint pen. 
