A Photo of Mt. Fuji

When you’ve taken a special photo, you’d know it. You’d remember the photo and events around the photo for a long time. And years later, hopefully you still have that photo to remind you of what has happened. This photo of Mt. Fuji is one of those photos

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It was February 2018. I won my ballot to run the Tokyo marathon. My friends Rick and Rika who lived in the outskirt of Tokyo graciously offered to host my wife and me for the marathon. On the day of our arrival, Rick picked us up at the train station. We settled down in the guest room. Rick asked us what we wanted to eat. We decided to have ramen. Rick took us to a ramen restaurant nearby whose owner was a big fan of 90’s rock. We walked through the door to creep by Stone Temple Pilots. Rick always knows his food and music.

Catching up with old friends is always fun. Rick jokingly played the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine hosted a marathon runner who was there to win the race, and man that was a good episode. I triple checked my alarm clock after watching it.

Tokyo marathon was like no other marathons I’ve done. The atmosphere was unforgettable. Spectators dressed up as all kinds of characters; army bands were playing along the routes; people brought food and drinks for runners. I had the best cherry tomatoes of my life.

The day after the marathon we bid goodbye to our wonderful hosts, got on a Shinkansen train and headed down to Kawaguchiko, a small town by Mt. Fuji. On our train ride, got caught a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. Famously elusive, especially in the winter days, Mt. just barely showed its face behind foggy clouds. It was worth trip if that was what we’d see.

Kawaguchiko or Kawaguchi Lake was at the foot of the Mt. Fuji, and our hotel room was by the lake facing the mountain. The next morning I woke up at 6, debating whether I should go for a recovery run. It was near freezing out, and I peeked out of the window, saw a foggy mush and went straight back to bed(I ran 42.195 kilometres just two days before, gimme a break). I woke up to my wife with a good spirit. She asked me if I had seen what’s out of our window. Before I could answer, the curtain flung open and sweet Fuji and all that’s good and pure! It’s there!

I know this has not been quite about photography per se. But here’s the photo I shot then and there.

It’s not too shabby waking up to this view.

Okay! Here’s the techie part: it was shot with a Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 lens on a Canon 5D Mark II at ISO50, f16, 1/80s. We good?

That’s about it. Till next time!