Last week, my friends and I rented a house on Lake Sai (Saiko is it’s full name, but “ko” means lake so…), which is one of the main lakes around Mt. Fuji.

On our last day, we had planned to go see a small cave that was marked on our brightly colored tourist map, and then go hiking up a nearby mountain that has a great view of Mt. Fuji. When we got off the bus at the cave’s supposed stop, it was nowhere to be found, but there were signs promising to point us in the right direction.

We followed the signs into the woods, walking along the fairly well-maintained path through the trees. After following a couple more signs for the cave, we hit another sign, which told us the cave that we were looking for was actually back the way we came. We had already walked for about 15 minutes, and the cave wasn’t supposed to be that great, so we just kept walking along the path, which promised to lead to the larger, more well-known caves.

That was a pretty good decision on our part.

The forest we walked through was filled with weird trees that spiraled around the trunks of other tree, a ground made up frozen leaves that would break if you stepped too hard on it, ice formations in former puddles, and even an old refrigerator that someone just dumped in the middle of the woods.

The path wasn’t always that clear cut, and we had to climb up steps made from frozen tree branches at one point, but it was amazing - and made even better by the fact that we just stumbled upon it by accident.

We found out later that it’s an official nature trail, but it wasn’t labeled on any maps we had, so at least we got to think we were special for our hour-long trek .