Fuji Safari Park

Today I will make a slight variation from my normal reports on "traffic" and "parking" and give a completely different view of driving. That is, driving through a park full of animals ready to take your head off if you open the window... awesome.

I took the day off on Thursday, and headed downward Mt. Fuji's famous "Fuji Safari" park.

It was a very smooth drive down. We left Tokyo at 8am, and we heading along the Shuto expressway in no time. The weather was terrible with little respite from the rain, but that didn't discourage the speedsters.

Interestingly the speed signs along the exressway were all updated to display "50" km, and this too didn't stop people from driving at 120kmp/h.

We got off the expressway at the Susono Exit and headed up toward the safari-park. The drive from the exressway to the park consists of a short windy section of road, which is frequented by small trucks who's drivers are unable to keep on their side of the road on the corners. If you do take this path, pay careful attention to the corner mirrors located on each of the hairpin corners.

The lush green of the Fuji foot hill forrest is so dense and beautiful, it is

Fiji Safari

The ticket gate is like a toll gate, you drive up, wind down your window and pay the (cute) lady at the gate. Who will give you 5 minutes of "overly" helpful information. There are park guides in English also so if you aren't offered on, ask for one (if you prefer EN over JP reading material).
Once in the park, we drove streight on in to the Safari drive. This wasn't my intention at all, I had a fear of some big clawed animal sidling up to my car and clawing the paint work. Once you are in the safari drive, you have no alternative but to complete the circuit. However, as soon as I saw the first lot of bears just strolling along the road we were on, I decided to relax and enjoy myself.

It is amazing how close the animals are to you. A zoo is great, but this was something else. With Tigers only a couple of feet from the car, and lions fighting within meters of you, there was definately an adrenaline rush to be had. Once we had completed the (what I will call) first leg of Bears, Lions, Tigers & Cheetahs it was on to the more placid animals, the Elephants and Giraffes. This was when we had a new first experience (of the day). A giraffe walked right along side the car, bearly missing the side mirror. OK maybe it was a foot away, but it was so big that it could have easily been a meter away yet still felt close.

To anyone interested in risking a few claw marks on their car (and I think this is a very minor risk) to see some of the planets most intriguing animals up close, I highly recommend a visit to the Fuji Safari.

Driving back to Tokyo was great, the traffic flowed at a cool 120kmp/h with some cars travelling over 150 at times.
All was good until the navigation unit gave me directions about 10 seconds after we had headed in the wrong direction.. Lucky as it would turn out, we ended up close to our favourite restaurant "Sizzlers", so decided to avoid the thickening ruch hour traffic and stop for dinner.
The Tokyo Dome Hotel parking is VERY narrow, driving a V8 Holden Commodore down the spiral to the basement parking floors was a pretty scary feat, and I wouldn't recommend trying to get a Hummer down there. Lucky again, there were no scrapes or scratches when we finally pulled into a park. The good thing about this parking facility is if you spend more then 3000 yen at any of the restaurants or shops in the hotel building, you get 2 hours free parking. Pretty good if you are planning on eating at Sizzlers at 2990 per meal on average..

All in all, a great day trip away from Tokyo. Well Recommended.