Getting to our next destination was a little trickier than any of the others in Japan. It involved not only two bullet trains but also a very long bus ride up mountain roads. The bus trip was livened up by the autistic Japanese passenger doing constant sound effects, Greg's favourite being the imitation of the door beeping. We finally arrived at our ryokan, perched on a mountainside overlooking Mount Fuji.

Checking in we were told that we had been upgraded to a larger room, complete with lounge area and optional 'western' beds if we wanted. The view from our room was spectacular, sweeping Japanese mountain ranges complete with Mount Fuji in the distance. We hastily changed into our kimonos and had some green tea (however we threw the formal tea ceremony rules out the window) before changing back into our 'normal' clothes for dinner.

Dinner consisted of multiple small plates of deliciousness whilst the sun was setting over Mount Fuji out of the windows. Even the sashimi tasted amazing which is suspicious considering the sea was a fair distance from our mountaintop ryokan. After dinner it was bath time. We knew the drill from the last ryokan, however this place was much larger so the chances of having our respective baths to ourselves was remote. Sure enough as we de-robed and slipped into the bathrooms we struggled to know where to look. Claire had a hard time getting into the room in the first place as she nearly collided with a young Japanese lady trying to exit. Not wanting to lift her eyes from the floor Claire made a rather comical entrance, sidling past what she can only imagine was someone with a very confused look on their face. The showering process consists of sitting on a low stool with a hand held shower to wash which we did in a very modest fashion. Greg, however, witnessed how a true Japanese man does this, essentially with no modesty whatsoever and a determination to ensure no crack or crevice goes un-soaped or un-scrubbed. Fortunately the baths and shower areas were much larger than the previous one to compensate for the increased attendance and we each were able to find a small corner to relax in. That night we opted to not use the western beds for our last sleep in Japan and instead assembled the sleeping mats on the tatami matting. Sleeping on the floor like this is incredibly and surprisingly comfortable.

In the middle of the night we were both awoken by an 'emergency alert' on Claire's phone, unfortunately it was all in Japanese so we had no idea what it was alerting us to, an impending tsunami or volcanic eruption maybe? Greg was suffering from morning lethargy so just told Claire to ignore it and go back to sleep. Once we actually got up and logged onto wifi at breakfast, we found out that the day before there had been somewhere in the region of 100 volcanic earthquakes in the area, so they were advising people not to visit. Already unsure of whether to explore the area more or just head towards the airport, this made our decision for us.

After a buffet breakfast (we avoided the potato salad, coleslaw, miso soup and fried tofu) we had our morning bath - we left Japan squeaky clean. We had not appreciated the night before, as it had been dark, that the bathrooms had one wall entirely made of glass. We soaked in the hot spring water with a spectacular view of Mount Fuji and crisp mountain air flowing through the floor to ceiling windows, the perfect way to say goodbye and 'arigato' to Japan.