{"id":1123,"date":"2020-10-02T10:19:48","date_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michael.lavaveshkul.com\/blog\/?p=1123"},"modified":"2024-07-26T09:17:55","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T16:17:55","slug":"kawaguchiko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michael.lavaveshkul.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/kawaguchiko\/","title":{"rendered":"Kawaguchiko"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This picture is available on my prints site here!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing my trend of writing up my trips well after they\u2019ve happened\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in August, I decided despite the pandemic, I wanted to try to go take a picture of the Milky Way. It\u2019s starting to become somewhat of a yearly tradition for me. (Here\u2019s some shots from 2018<\/a> and 2019<\/a>.) After consulting with another photographer here in Tokyo and doing a ton more research online, I decided to go to Kawaguchiko because I wanted to try to get the Milky Way and Mt. Fuji together in one shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

For this trip, I decided to rent the Tamron 17-28mm f\/2.8 Di III RXD Lens as the widest angle lens I own is the Sony 24-70 GM and I wanted to try to get as much of the sky in the shot as possible with the foreground. For the most part, I tried to use it as my main lens for everything else, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent most of my nights sitting at the lake\u2019s edge somewhere trying to take pictures. I was hoping to also do some time-lapses and maybe get the Perseids meteor shower. However, the weather didn’t want to cooperate and blocked most of the sky a lot of the time. If I didn\u2019t get that first shot the first night I was there, it would\u2019ve been really disappointing\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from spending my evenings clicking a shutter button, I also went to Mt. Fuji Panorama Ropeway<\/a>, the Fugaku Wind Cave<\/a>, the Narusawa Ice Cave<\/a>, and Yurari<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The caves were nice. I wouldn\u2019t recommend seeing the ice cave in summer, though. Especially the ice cave. While they\u2019re a nice retreat from the heat, I was the hoping the ice cave would have more stalagmite\/stalactite-like ice formations, but they\u2019re all melted away by summer. Side note, thanks to the pandemic, the tourism buses in the town ran a lot less frequently and had slightly reduced hours. So I walked my way from the Ice Cave to Yurari. And even though it was sunny, it suddenly started raining twice on my way there for quite a while\u2026 Thankfully they had a free shuttle back to the major station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yurari is an onsen and hotel. You don\u2019t need a room to use the onsen, though. After paying the entrance fee, you can pay extra to use private onsen rooms where you can relax with a view of Mt. Fuji (although it was blocked by clouds while I was there). The public onsen may have a view, too, but I didn\u2019t try it out. They also have some restaurants and stuff where you can get things like curry that looks like Mt. Fuji.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mt. Fuji Panorama Ropeway is also a nice spot to visit when there\u2019s a clear of Mt. Fuji. (It was cloudy all day that day, too, so I just got to see the mountain enveloped in a bunch of clouds.) There\u2019s also a fire rabbit shrine at the top with the observatory. There’s an old tale that the shrine is based on and the English version is on their website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some notes on the Tamron lens for myself and anyone else who might be interested:<\/p>\n\n\n\n