that our trip was only half an hour as it was bitterly cold, I couldn’t feel either the end of my nose or my toes. I guess it was our own fault really as we had to stayed out on top deck for the whole of the trip, the scenery was just too amazing to go down below deck. After the boat docked we had a brisk walk back to the hotel to grab our bags as our train was leaving at 12 noon. We decided to pay the extra and take the tourist train as it had a massive circular window at the back of it which meant we would get great views on the way out of the village and all the way back to the main station. The train also had two small areas with big red velvet sofas in them. How cool is that??? We stayed in the seats by the big window until we couldn’t see Mount Fuji anymore then moved onto the sofas!!! It was great reclining on a big comfy sofa whilst being on a train - it sure beat the commuter train that we had got down there the day before. So that was it, our trip to Mount Fuji was over. It had been truly

fabulous, we couldn’t have wished for better weather and views so we left feeling very lucky and happy.

We had to head back to Tokyo to start the first leg of our journey up to the Northern Island of Hokkaido. We had decided to break up the journey and stop off in Morioka so we’d booked into a place we’d found on a hostels website. We got back to Tokyo from Fuji in around 3 hours and we had around 30 minutes to spare before we boarded our first bullet train. Rob was very excited about going on one of these Shinkansen (Japanese name) trains and I must admit I was fairly looking forward to seeing what it would be like travelling at such great speeds on a train. I think this trains top speed was 175 mph!!! We found the way to the Shinkansen line, as these trains have their own special lines as the tracks are different to ordinary train tracks, due to them going so fast. The train was already