majestic, iconic,

spectacular... [dramatic music]

absolute nightmare to see in person.

And that is because at 3776 m,

Mount Fuji spends most of its time with its head in the clouds.

To the point that in the last 6 years of living in Japan

I've only ever seen it 3 or 4 times.

And so today we've come to try to see it and capture it once and for all on camera.

By coming to the number one best spot to see it in all of Japan

Lake Kawaguchi!

[Chris] Fuji-Q, Japan's greatest theme park

The notorious Aokigahara forest

The country's most photographed pagoda

plastered across every Japan travel guide the world over.

There's a lot going on in the Lake Kawaguchi area

and, with my impending 2000 km cycle across Japan,

what better place to get some practice in,

than by cycling 20 km around the lake.

And to spice things up a bit, I won't be going alone either.

[Chris] So for the cycle across Japan,

I'm trying to get various friends taking part and joining in.

So recently I've been holding "auditions" to see which friends can actually cycle,

which friends are actually good at cycling.

With that in mind, let me introduce our first contestant:

Sharla! Not... in Japan... anymore.

[Sharla] Hi!

[Chris] Good see you [Sharla] Good to see you

[Chris] Thanks for the coffee. [Sharla] Cheers [Chris] You know the way to my heart.

[Chris] Fun fact:

Sharla and I have know each other 5 years now. [Sharla] We have.

[Chris] And this is the first time you've ever really appeared in a video.

[Sharla] And why is that?

[Chris] Well I've always seen you as like an enemy

[Sharla] *laughs* An enemy? [Chris] Enemy, right. My rival.

[Chris] But now you live in Korea, you're not a rival anymore so we can be friends now.

[Sharla] Yeah. [Chris] So what are your strengths?

[Sharla] My strengths? Um. Very energetic.

[Chris] *mocking* "Very energetic" [Sharla] Think I could handle a cycle across Japan.

[Chris] Weaknesses?

[Sharla] Weaknesses?

[Chris] Weaknesses.

[Sharla] Spiders. Fuck spiders. [Chris] I think we can both agree on that one.

[Sharla] And roller-coasters.

Those are probably the only two things that I can't handle.

[Chris] Roller-coasters you say?

But we're right next to Fuji-Q Highland Park.

[Sharla] Good thing we're not going there today. *laughs*

[Chris] Well we've come all this way. I think we should.

[Sharla] I think we're going to be quite busy with the cycling.

[Chris] I think we should go to the best theme park in Japan, ever. [Sharla] Ah, no, no, no.

[Sharla] We'll see about that. [Chris] Yeah

[Chris] Okay so we've got our... we've got our bikes.

I've also got my obnoxiously orange bag.

That people on the international fucking space station could probably see.

Ah. But here's a map to give you a sense of scale.

Here's Mount Fuji and here is where we are.

And today we're going to start here, go all the way around the lake and end at Sengen Park.

Where the nice pagoda is that you see

in all the in all the promotion pamphlets for Japan. [Sharla] Oh that's where that is. Oh okay.

[Chris] Exactly.

[Sharla] Can we go to the bat cave? Cos that sounds amazing.

[Chris] Psycho bat cave! [dramatic music]

[Chris] I'm not too enthusiastic about going to somewhere called Saiko bat cave.

[Sharla] Sounds great! [Chris] At what? 10 o'clock in the morning.

[Chris] Let's get going. Try and keep up! [Sharla] Yeah I'll do my best.

[Chris] This is actually the first time I've cycled more than 20 km in 3 years.

So, it's a pretty serious day.

This will dictate how scared I am before the 2000 km cycle.

If today goes well, then I'll be, kind of, happy and excited about the cycle

Look at... She's already overtaken me.

Absolute show-off. Unbelievable.

[Chris] Oh my God. It looks amazing! [Dramatic music]

[Chris] Is what I would be saying if we could actually see it.

Still in the clouds. Still in the clouds.

So we're 20 minutes into the cycle.

According to the fitness tracker thing we've done 6 km and burned 350 calories.

So its time to get a little bit of a cheeky... cheeky breakfast in. [To Sharla] How are you feeling?

[Sharla] Hungry. [Chris] Hungry? [Sharla] Yeah.

[Chris] Well I've got a pretty amazing breakfast. [Sharla] Aw.

[Sharla] *laughs* Is that Kit Kats?

[Chris] This is a Fuji cider like lemonade. I'll let you take that. [Sharla] That looks... that looks nice.

[Chris] And of course the ultimate breakfast, the breakfast of champions!

Kit Kat strawberry cheesecake flavour!

The Kit Kat flavour unique to Fuji! Yeah!

[Sharla] Yeah.

[Sharla] Lovely, thank you. [Chris] Lovely, healthy breakfast. Let's enjoy.

[Chris] When I first heard cider in Japan. I thought "Yeah apple cider!"

[Sharla] I know. [Chris] But actually cider in Japan is effectively lemonade, right.

[Sharla] Basically. [Chris] Don't know how that happened.

[Chris] Tastes mostly of carbonated air [Sharla] Bubbles?

[Sharla] Yeah. [Chris] than actual... than actual beverage.

[Sharla] I feel like I'd be good if you get rid of the bubbles.

[Chris] What's your favourite Japanese Kit Kat flavour? [Sharla] Wasabi.

[Chris] Wasabi? I love wasabi. I used to eat them like frivolously.

But then I went to a capsule hotel and I ate like 20.

[Sharla] *laughs* I saw that video. [Chris] And then I couldn't sleep for like 2 days.

And so I didn't eat them ever again anyway.

[Chris] This is like one of the few flavours I haven't tried. [Sharla] I've never had it either actually.

Strawberry cheesecake. Somehow that represents Mount Fuji.

[Chris] Oh wow it's like... it's really powdery and weird. Maybe it's because it's really old.

[Chris] Which... we bought them from this little tiny arguably crappy

souvenir shop. The man was very grumpy.

Didn't seem enthusiastic at all to receive our custom.

[Chris] How do you actually feel? [Sharla] Um. Good so far. It's been really nice.

[Sharla] The view is gorgeous. [Chris] Mmm.

[Sharla] Um. We've done what? 6 km so far? [Chris] Mm mm.

[Chris] Strawberry cheesecake flavoured Kit Kat verdict 1 - 10?

[Sharla] Ah... 7. [Chris] 7? I'd give it a 7. [Sharla] Yeah.

[Chris] It's not as good as the sake flavour. [Sharla] No.

[Chris] And what about the Fujiyama cider drink? 1 - 10?

[Sharla] Shit out of ten.

[Chris] Shit out of ten!

[Bicycle bell rings]

[Chris] How you feeling Sharla? [Sharla] Good. [Chris] Good.

[Chris] I must admit. The Kit Kats did leave me wanting more.

I think.

I think we're gonna grab some lunch to be honest.

[Sharla] Yes. [Chris] Yes.

[Chris] So you're probably wondering why I chose you to come onto this trip to Mount Fuji.

[Sharla] Yeah. Why was that?

[Chris] We both climbed Mount Fuji. Sharla and I. Different times. [Sharla] We did.

[Chris] Until! Last month, I had the number one Mount Fuji video ever on Youtube.

But then it got demonetized

cos I stupidly used a soundtrack by... I think it was the Yoshida brothers.

Who you... who you teach english, aswell.

Have a word with them.

This is all a conspiracy because now Sharla's actually got the number one

video on Mount Fuji.

[Sharla] Yes! [Chris] So she worked with the Yoshida brothers to fuck me.

Basically.

But one thing she can't take away from me of course is that I do have

a more famous birthday on famousbirthdays.com

This is a real website made by real people.

Look here's her stupid face.

From like 10 years ago.

Sharla in Japan 4774th most popular birthday.

[Sharla] Thats pretty good.

[Chris] 30th most famous 32 year old web star.

[Sharla] *incoherent* something for that. [Chris] A CV worthy claim there.

[Chris] I love that I'm so hungry, I haven't even started eating cos I'm so...

I want to get this done. I want... there you go look.

Look at this handsome young man here.

[Chris] 2997th most famous birthday. [Sharla] Wow. So you're like 2000 ahead of me.

[Chris] 2000 more famous birthdays. Even if you do have the number 1 Mount Fuji video.

I've got a more famous birthday. And lets face it, that's better anyway.

[Chris] Oh my God thats the best view I've ever seen in my entire life! [Dramatic music]

Is what I would have said if we could actually see it.

That's Mount Fuji right there.

You can see the base of it stretching across the horizon. But no.

I'm starting to get a little worried. We spent a lot of time an resources to come here today.

We've got Sharla in Japan. Who doesn't even live in Japan anymore.

And we've got a really nice camera man but still no Mount Fuji.

I'm a little bit disappointed and a little bit concerned.

[Sharla] I actually had a perfect view of the Mountain this morning. At 5:30.

[Sharla] While you we're snoring away.

[Chris] Wait. What? You actually saw Mount Fuji this morning

[Sharla] Zero clouds. Zero.

[Chris] Why didn't you wake me up! [Sharla] It was beautiful.

[Dramatic music] [Sharla] You were sleeping.

[Chris] I've travelled all the way here from like Northern Japan just to see it and you didn't even wake me up.

[Chris] Why have I brought her here? Why... why are you here today? What?

Unbelievable.

[Chris] There's something quite weird up there, there's like a little capsule style hotel.

[Chris] All the rooms are like little capsule blocks. [Sharla] We should have stayed there.

[Chris] Yeah. [Sharla] It looks really cool.

[Chris] We should have stayed over here. [Sharla] There's a huge window in the front. So you have an amazing view of Mount Fuji.

[Chris] Oh yeah an "amazing" view. In brackets.

[Chris] Six years I've waited for this view and it is magnificent.

Is what I would have said if we'd seen Mount Fuji but it's not here again.

Um. That said it is a nice view

and I feel pretty... I feel pretty good about myself.

[Sharla] Yeah we made it. That was the hardest part of today.

[Chris] Yeah. We finished the 20 km cycle. That was great. Well done. Good job. [Sharla] Yeah!

[Chris] And even more difficult than the cycle was the stairs to actually get here.

We had to climb up a little mountain along the stairs of despair.

I used to have this little guidebook before I came to Japan.

This was the front cover. This shot here with Mount Fuji.

So I'm a little bit disappointed that I've come all the way here for the first time ever and we can't see it.

But what we can do in this day and age is use CGI trickery. Computer special effects.

To make it look like there's actually a Mount Fuji right behind us.

[Camera shutter] [Dramatic music]

[Chris] So you did a pretty good job today Sharla.

You did do the 20 km and you were almost able to keep up with me...

[Sharla] Almost? [Chris] ...the whole way. [Sharla] Almost?

[Chris] Almost. [Sharla] I'm pretty sure I did better than you.

[Chris] I feel like you've almost passed the test but not quite.

[Chris] You're missing something. [Sharla] What?

[Chris] Well lets face it you don't have as famous a birthday as I do.

[Chris] Ah so I feel like there is one more test that you should pass.

[Chris] And that is... [Sharla] What is that?

[Chris] The biggest roller-coaster in Japan ever at Fuji-Q Highland park.

[Dramatic music] [Chris] Which is literally just over there somewhere. [Sharla] No. No. No. [Chris] Yes.

[Chris] We're doing it. [Sharla] No. I'm not. [Chris] Face your fears.

[Chris] Face your fears. Do the roller-coaster. [Sharla] That is not happening. [Chris] And you can come on the cycle.

[Chris] Yes! [Sharla] No. [Chris] Yes!

[Creaking roller-coaster]

[Chris] This is it. How do you feel? [Sharla] *cries* Horrible!

[Sharla] This is terrible we're so high up. You can see like the entire city.

This does not sound safe. What the hell is that noise?

[Sharla] *cries*

[Chris] Time to... time to conquer your fears! [Sharla] *cries* No! I hate you. I hate you.

[Chris] I won't lie. I'm a little bit scared.

[Chris] I'm a little bit scared but-

[screaming] [Chris] *screaming* OH! GOD!

NO!

FUCK!

[Sharla] *screaming* Oh God! What the fucking fuck?

[Sharla] *heavy breathing*

[Sharla] *crying*

[Chris] *grunt*

[Chris] FUCK!

[Loud wooshing]

[Dramatic music] [Camera shutter]