Less than a month after Fujisan has officially been listed as World Heritage Site, my friend in Shizuoka invited me to visit Japan, after reading its nomination document and found out a lot of interesting information on its cultural components, I decided to visit Fujisan again to see this beauty in the new perspective. I started my trip at Shizuoka, in the city of Shimizu, where the controversial Miho no Matsubara is located. The place is the large pine forest in the sand peninsular with the view of Fujisan. I really enjoyed the pine forest, and the view of Fujisan was quite stunning; however, the view was not exactly similar with the work of Hiroshige and there are many better viewpoints to see Fujisan especially from Izu areas, also the beach was grayish and not lovely at all, so I was not impressed with the place.

The view of Fujisan from Yamanaka Lake, one of the Fuji Five Lakes was again lovely from the lakeshore, and then I continued to the village of Oshino Hakkai, I never heard the name of this place before until I read the nomination paper. The village was very touristy with many souvenir shops and restaurants selling soba noodles. The reasons to visit this village are the springs, there are eight turquoise color springs in the village, and all are crystal clear and very photogenic. The village also has many traditional houses around the springs so a very beautiful place indeed. I revisited the Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine; the great Torii gate is under restoration; I saw the shrine welcomed more visitors with larger car park. The starting point of pilgrimage route behind the shrine is also looked clean and become a new tourist photo spot. My next place was the heavily developed Kawaguchi Lake, the hotel and restaurant are everywhere along the shore. During my visit there even had lavender festival, so I got a nice photo of Fujisan with lavender field! I loved the small but very clean Lake Sai; the area is very refreshing after all tourism development in Kawaguchi.

The area from Lake Sai to Lake Motosu is a very dense forest area called Aokigahara Jukai Forest, here I could not see Fujisan anymore, I visited the Naruzawa Ice Cave, the ice was ridiculous small, but it was very fun and a great place to get some cool in the middle of summer. My group decided to skip Lake Shoji as it was quite out of way and drove south to the city of Fujinomiya. On the way we visited the sacred Shiraito Falls and Otodome Falls, the entrance to Shiraito falls is closing until the end of this year. The Japanese promised UNESCO to redevelop the area, so all shops and hotels are destroyed to create large Japanese gardens with big red bridge. At first, I was very disappointed that I could not see Shiraito falls which is a World Heritage Site, a local suggested us to go another side of the riverbank for a better view. The falls was indeed very beautiful. My last spot is the Fujisan Hongu Sangen Shrine in Fujinomiya, the brightly red shrine looked very new compared to the much more authentic of Kitaguchi Hongu Shrine. I end of my Fuji circle tour with a highway drive to the city of Mishima, along the way I could see Fujisan before sunset.

As I already mentioned in my previous review that I really admired the beauty of Fujisan, but its cultural value was hard to grasp. After I read its nomination document and visited all related site, at first, I had to say I still not truly understood its cultural value! But when my Japanese friend reminded me that I had to consider them as Kami or Shinto Spirit under Fuji Cult then cultural value will be comprehensible. His words really enlightened me, Fujisan is maybe the most unique Shinto site in Japanese World Heritage Sites, as other sites are manmade structures, and the sacred natural sites mostly are attached to the Shrine liked in Nara and Nachi Falls. But Fujisan and its surrounding forests, lakes, springs and falls are the center point of whole Fujisan Cult as Kami, not the shrines or any structures. At the end I felt that I started to understand the cultural value of Fujisan but when I saw a photo of jet skier on Lake Motosu, my idea on sacred Kami with Jet Ski were really hard to go together.