A train painted with Mount Fuji cartoons took us on the last leg of the two-hour trip from Tokyo to Kawaguchiko Station on a drizzly Friday last spring. The ground we stood on certainly was anything but: In some places, the lava is more than 440 feet deep. The court determined that “Shinto priests’ negligence in performing religious rights” had angered the volcano, and it ordered provinces nearest Mount Fuji to increase worship of the volcano’s deity, Asama no Okami. Then the lava gradually grew sparse, grass began to line the pathway and the twisted trees of Aokigahara faded into taller pines. An hour later, on a trail above the waterfall that continued on to the summit of Mount Mitsutoge, the clouds pulled back like curtains and Mount Fuji appeared across the valley.

Source: New York Times January 18, 2017 05:01 UTC