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Fuji-san returns

February 7th, 2008 by Joe Jones		 Joe

One of the great joys of flying in the front of an airplane is that you don’t have wings or engine exhaust to obscure your view, which makes the window seat a great place for aerial photography. I ran into Fuji-san on a cloudy day in 2006, and finally got a clearer shot of it on my way back from China in 2008.

The not-so-secret “secret” to spotting Fuji-san from the air: Pretty much all flights leaving Tokyo for destinations to the west (including Asia, but not Europe) use an airway that runs over the water south of Fuji-san. This is to avoid the airspace around Yokota and Atsugi, the US military bases on the west side of Tokyo. So when you’re leaving Tokyo, sit on the right side of the plane: when you’re coming to Tokyo, sit on the left.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 6:11 am and is filed under Japan, Photography, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    • 7 Responses to 'Fuji-san returns'

    1. vincent Says:
      February 7th, 2008 at 8:26 am

      Thanks for the nice Fuji-picture in clear weather. Beautiful.
      I do not know about right and left side, but apparently from Haneda Airport the left/right rule doesn’t work. Leaving from Haneda for Kumamoto on the left side I took this picture:
      http://tinyurl.com/2zum3x
      And when returning to Haneda a few days later, again on the left side, it took this picture:
      http://tinyurl.com/3yvh9e

    2. Curzon Says:
      February 7th, 2008 at 9:56 am

      Vince, those are both beautiful pics.

      Joe, your shots are always great too. God it’s a beautiful mountain.

    3. Roy Berman Says:
      February 7th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

      Would you believe I have never seen it in person?

    4. Durf Says:
      February 19th, 2008 at 5:29 am

      The shinkansen rule, of course, is to sit on the right when going to Osaka and on the left when coming back to Tokyo.

    5. Jade Oc Says:
      February 19th, 2008 at 11:08 am

      Or you could just climb it I guess….
      Not that I would recommend it:
      来てみれば
      さほどでもなし
      富士の山
      (Yeah, I know this originally refers to the actual process of climbing, but it works better if you think of it as meaning “looks better from a distance”....)

    6. Aceface Says:
      February 19th, 2008 at 11:42 am

      Ｈｅｒｅ　ｇｏｅｓ　ａｎｏｔｈｅｒ．
      富士山に 登らない馬鹿 二度登る馬鹿

    7. Jade Oc Says:
      February 19th, 2008 at 11:43 am

      Yeah, that’s one I like too. I’m in the perfect position – done it once, no intention of doing it again.

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