All week, I had been hoping to get a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. Yet each time I was sure I would be able to see Japan’s iconic, perfectly shaped mountain, I walked away with nary a glimpse of its snow-tipped peak. While staying in Shinjuku, I had hoped to see the mountain from the observation deck at the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, but I saw nothing but clouds and the endless rows of buildings that make up Tokyo’s skyline stretching beyond the horizon.

Almost every tour book recommends a shinkansen ride between Tokyo and parts west as the best way to get a look at Fuji-san while in Japan, so I was excited when I traveled from Tokyo to Kyoto on a perfect, sunny spring day. The assigned seats I was given on the shinkansen for my excursion from Tokyo to Kyoto, though, were on the wrong side of the train, and I didn’t even realize I had already passed Mt. Fuji by until the train stopped at Nagoya. It appeared that Japan’s tallest mountain was going to elude my attempts to view it.

A few days later, settling into my seat aboard an ANA flight from Osaka to Tokyo, I had almost entirely forgotten about these failed attempts. It was barely eight o’clock in the morning, and I was too busy wondering how I had somehow managed to end up sitting in a business class seat for the first time in my life despite having actually purchased the cheapest ticket available. A few minutes into the flight, I ended up briefly chatting with one of the flight attendants about what I thought of Japan and where I had learned Japanese. After talking with her for a minute or so and getting my drink, she went to serve the other passengers, and I went back to playing with the confusing array of buttons on my armrest in an attempt to discover which of the seemingly infinite possibilities for arranging the seat would prove most comfortable.

A few minutes later, though, the same friendly flight attendent returned and asked if I had ever seen Mt. Fuji from the air. I replied that I had not, and she showed me to a window on the opposite side of the plane, telling me that there was a great view of Fuji that day. I looked out, and there it was, with its summit protruding from beneath the sea of clouds as if it were an island. All around was white: white clouds surrounding the snow-covered peak of Mt. Fuji. I stood, awestruck by the image - this was way better than pictures I had seen of the view from Tokyo skyscrapers or the shinkansen. If heaven was real, I thought, it must look something like this.

That day, looking down on Fuji-san from 35,000 feet, it became perfectly clear why the Japanese view the mountain as being sacred.