Mt. Fuji

This post is coming almost a week after the event blogged about below, so my apologies, please. I want to keep this updated every week so that I don't get behind posting about what I'm doing. But I have good reason: Carly and the Browns arrived to Kyoto on Tuesday the 24th! We'd been celebrating their grand arrival to Kyoto and their adventures in Japan for a good three days, and there was no time for anything else, which was just perfect. Now they have gone back to Richmond, all except for Carly, who is still here with me in Kyoto until the 2nd of September, after which she will move it on to Yokohama, her new home for the year.

So, about what I did last weekend; I climbed Mt. Fuji! Dan, Jessie, and I made a weekend trip of it so that we could meet up with other JETs from Toyama prefecture, one of whom is a Canadian friend of Dan's. The three of us met up in Kawaguchiko, a small resort town at the base of Mt. Fuji. Aside from the mountain, there are some beautiful lakes around it that many people unfamiliar with the area probably don't know about. But they are a great vacation in their own right. Here is Lake Kawaguchiko, where we had a swim upon our arrival.

The Lake looked like a resort, lined with hotels sporting porches and lounge chairs. There were paddle boats in the form of pink swans, and a handful of motor boats even whizzed by from time to time. Later that afternoon, we moved over to Fujiyoshida, another town at the base of the mountain and closer to our embarkation point. We stayed the night at a youth hostel and had a meal at a small sushi restaurant in town.

We were the only patrons of the restaurant that evening, as far as we know. The chef's daughter, who must have been around 35, spoke great English and entertained us throughout the meal with questions about where we were from and what we liked about Japan. She told us all about her town, and as it turns out, she revealed that she was a Japanese teacher for local English speakers, and that she had a class that night at the community center. So, after the meal, we ran back to our hostel, dropped off unnecessary belongings and met back outside to be picked up to go to the lesson. There, we met two other Americans, one Brit, and a woman from Ireland. They were all English teachers like us. We had a fun time playing some Japanese language games, and after, we returned home to get some rest for the long day of hiking ahead. This one is of Dan and me before arriving to our hostel earlier in the day.


Behold Mt. Fuji. After leaving our hostel the next morning, we walked up the main road of town with this in our sights: the summit rising above the clouds. Our plan, as we decided the day before, was to hike up to stage 5 of the mountain, about half way up and the typical starting point for tourists. Dan's friend was getting a bus to stage 5 that afternoon, arriving at 3:30, so that she and her Toyama friends could climb that night. So we had to do the first half of the mountain in the morning to get to them.

We stopped before our initial ascent in order to fill our empty stomachs with a piping bowl of fresh udon. Here is the restaurant where we stopped, and where many Japanese were both breakfasting and lunching.

The map at the base of the mountain, or at stage 1, detailing our route is below. We walked for at least an hour and a half on paved road with cars passing us on the left. This was not the high point of the journey (no pun intended).

As we arrived to stage 1, we were greeted by three Japanese women beckoning us to come and drink some cold tea and water. Thinking it was a profit seeking setup on their part--no doubt because of our Western experiences--we nearly passed them by waving, "no thanks." But, luckily, they communicated to us that it was "free," so we stopped for some cold oolong tea, some hot, fresh matcha, and some little sugar candies for energy.

Here we have Dan, Jessie, and me, having made it to stage 3. We took photos like this at every stage up until 5.

Here we have reached "a stage 5," but it was not the meeting point decided upon by Dan and his friend. So we walked another 25 minutes around the mountain via a small path to the main starting point.

We arrived here, at the "base camp" of Mt. Fuji, to find many gift shops, outdoor supply shops, and a small bus terminal. We crashed here after an exhausting 5-hour hike to stage 5 for approximately 4 hours, from 4:30 to 8:30. We just layed down on the ground after changing clothes, had some more snacks, and tried to recharge our batteries.

The Toyama JETs were about 25 large, so we split up into different groups according to approximated speed. One group left at 6:30, another at 7:30, and we left at 8:30. There were 6 of us in the group.

I was geared up with some waterproof pants, a couple layers of shirts, a waterproof jacket, hiking stick, handkerchief, hat, and head lamp. Boy, was that head lamp helpful. You wouldn't believe the jagged rocks we had to climb over, and with few hand railings. The path was easily a treacherous route, where much peril could have occurred. Thankfully, none did. Here we are at stage 7, getting some brandings on our walking sticks and stopping for water. This must have been about 3 hours into the night, at 11:30 pm.


I love Carly... and wish she had been with me. She was bummed not to have been able to come since she had not yet arrived to Kyoto.

After 5.5 hours of tough climbing, my quads and calves deteriorating under roughly 10 hours of climbing, up 3,776 meters, or 12,388 feet, we made it to the summit around 2:00 am. Relieved to be at the top, we tried to rest and get some sleep before the sunrise scheduled for 4:30, but whad'ya know, it was around 45 degrees F. So we huddled together trying to keep warm, but no sleeping happened. Jessie, Lockey, and me thrilled to be at the top, but also frozen:

Finally 4:30 arrived and this is the view we were working with: (we were beyond fortunate to have camped out in front of a Shinto torii at the summit so we could get some pictures like this.)


It was almost fully daylight before we could even see the sun. Check out those fluffy clouds.


Here is a picture of only a small fraction of the climbers who were viewing the sunrise that morning with us. Dan told me earlier that each night there are around 3,300 climbers who attempt the climb to the top each night. I would believe that. There were a ton of people.

The sunrise! And over the clouds!

Two thumbs up from me:

So beautiful.


This is the crater of Mt. Fuji, not nearly as exciting as the sunrise or the clouds. I even took home a piece of volcanic rock. It's my personal piece of the Aggro Crag... something I never got as a child, since I was never on Nickelodeon GUTS. But now I have a piece!

The walk down the mountain was pretty horrible, you may be surprised to hear. I'm sure many climbers forget the obvious corollary to climbing the mountain: if you climb up it, you have to climb down it. Ugh... I wish they had rigged a ski lift so it didn't take another 3-4 hours of stumbling, sliding, and slipping down the mountain trail of loose dirt and rock. That was not fun, especially getting dust and grit in my mouth and nose. But after taking a bus back down from stage 5, and getting back to Lake Kawaguchiko for a cleansing swim, I knew it was all worth it. There is a Japanese saying about Mt. Fuji that goes something like this: If you never climb Mt Fuji you are a fool, and if you climb it more than once you are a fool. Having climbed Mt. Fuji, I know this aphorism to be quite true. I leave you with a view from the climb down.