We went on an overnight trip to the Five Lakes, which are at the base of Mount Fuji. Our first stop was the visitor centre, where we watched a video about the mountain's history (it's actually made up of four volcanoes!), and were then interviewed for national TV - it turns out that a couple of days later Mount Fuji (Fuji-san to the Japanese) was given a UNESCO World Heritage listing - the TV people wanted the perspectives from some foreigners about the event...
Later we took the wonderful Retro Bus (a service of three little old buses which deliver tourists to more than 80 different attractions around the lakes) to the Kachi Kachi ropeway - this is a cable car up a mountain with views of the lake and Fuji (or not, as the case was for us, with clouds and rain veiling the mountain). There is a folk story at the mountain about a rabbit who catches a thieving native raccoon and does some nasty things to him - it's set on Mount Tenbo, where the cable car goes, so there are cute statues of the rabbit and raccoon (mostly getting along these days, it seems) dotted along the mountain. And yes, we really did see signs warning us about bears as we hiked back down. Thankfully we didn't see the bears themselves...