Staying with my friend, my days slipped away from me a bit.  I was traveling all over the place, but ultimately had to be back in Tokyo because that is where I was flying out.  I wanted to take a day trip to Mount Fuji to see it up close and personal.  Hiking the mountain is only available during the summer months so my timing was off, but I still wanted to get closer.

I started looking into tours towards the end of my stay with my friend and quickly realized that most things were sold out.  I was so bummed!  Instead, I  found the Fuji Shibazakura Festival in Lake Kawaguchiko.  When I began to map out the best route for getting from my friend’s house, to the festival, back to Tokyo I  realized that it was a little trickier than I had originally imagined with my reduced number of days. It was a ‘take this train here, switch lines there, transfer to the bus route, not many hostels available, total time approximately 7 hours there and back’ situation.

I began to make every excuse in the book for not going, “It’s too complicated. I can see Mount Fuji from the train ride from Okayama to Tokyo.  It’s not that big of a deal.”  And so on.  Finally, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  I was in Japan.  I was going to regret it if I didn’t go see Mount Fuji.

So I did.

I arrived to Lake Kawaguchiko just as the sun was setting.   I dropped my bags off at the hostel without even checking in and ran about a mile to the edge of town to get my shot.

I need to constantly remind myself to just do things.  Stop over-thinking.  Get on the train, change the bus line, travel all day and go.  In the end, I’ll only regret the things I didn’t do.