Finally Fuji

Well this post is long, long, long overdue but I am finally getting around to writing it. Yes you read the title correctly After a year and a half in Japan I finally got around to summiting its largest peak, and what self –respecting mountain man would I be had I not. My journey up was a little a-typical (well the start at least) but all the more fun for it I think.

So where to begin? Well let’s start with the weekend before. I had an absolute blast at a music festival called Summer Sonic. This is probably one of the biggest music events of the year in Kansai and it was pretty cool. Four stages of (mostly) excellent music, lots of people and, at least on the second day, great weather.

 

The first day was incredible though for far different reasons. Mainly a huge thunderstorm broke out halfway through the day. I have seriously never been that close to lightning. It was scary, harrowing and amazing al at once. The crowd ended up holed inside a baseball stadium for a few hours, a little miserable and soggy, until the power came back on.

After about two an a half hours everything restarted and I still managed to be introduced to some interesting new bands as well as seeing some of my all time favourite artists. It was a fun experience and I’d been craving live music, there is a bit of a drought in my area, I think I need to really get into the Japanese music scene.

 

Anyway I’m getting a little sidetracked so now onto the journey to Fuji. It started with yet another night bus journey to Tokyo. Once there I met up with an old friend from the UK who would be my climbing partner for the night. Yup that’s right we decided to opt for the traditional night climb up Fuji-san to see the sunrise from the Summit.

Standing over 3700 metres, Fuji-san is the highest point in all of Japan. In fact it is not a mountain at all but an active volcano, although it’s been around 300 years since it last erupted. It’s fairly verdant on the way up most likely due to the rich nutrients in the surrounding soil. Being so massive it features heavily in much of Japanese folklore, songs, poetry and so on. It is probably one of Japans most Iconic symbols and I really couldn’t end my stay here without visiting.

That being said we set off from Shinjuku on the 3 hour journey by train and bus to Fujiyoshida before setting off up to the fifth station (河口湖五合目). Once we arrived we met a great deal of people also readying for the night climb. As I said it is a very popular way to climb Fuji and to be honest even if you were to set out on your own you wouldn’t be lonely for long.

The climb itself is just a long and steady march to the top. There are plenty of mountain huts along the way to take a breather if you need one, usually necessary after the particularly steep portions. This climb is in no way difficult and there are plenty of pensioners and young children also on the trail. I think most people opt to climb a little earlier and bed down in one of the mountain huts to wake up for sunrise. This is expensive though so we opted to plough through the night.

This is the highest I have ever climbed and I was a little surprised by how quick the temperature changed, I went from roasting to freezing in a couple of hours. The oxygen level difference was also noticeable though nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. One thing that really made me giggle however was the over the top nature of many Japanese climbers, stopping every five minutes to take massive gulps from their oxygen canisters. The top moment was seeing a group of guys all taking deep pulls from said canisters before lighting up a ciggy each. Priceless.

I was also surprised at just how many huts there are. Whilst really expensive they were a bit of a god send near the top where I was deffo in need of a hot drink or two, the cup of 甘酒 near the top was divine. We reached the summit in about 6 hours, about an hour of this was spent queuing to complete the last 100 metres, and after a brief wait were greeted by the sun.

It made all the struggle worth it. I can’t put into words what the view was like adequately and sadly my phone’s little camera could not do the sunrise justice. As the sun rises up over the mountains and if the sky is exceptionally clear, as it was for us, you can really see huge rays of light spiking out in a half circle across the landscape. It looks just like the Iconic flag of the Japanese military.

Thoroughly awed and a little bit chilly we started to make our way back down. The ascent had been a pleasant one but I cannot say the same for the descent. The path consists of what felt like an infinite number of short zig-zags leading back down to the 6^th station information hut. The view never changes and the path is made up of small ash shale, which is not firm underfoot. You could probably run it in about 40 minutes but I did not have the energy for that. This part seemed to go on forever.

 

Once we’d finally got back to Kawaguchiko-eki we treated ourselves to some amazing udon, it’s about twice as thick as normal udon in Kawaguchiko and called houtou udon. With warm food in our bellies we nodded of quickly on the train journey back to Tokyo for some hard earned rest.

I think I fully appreciate why this Japanese proverb exists, “He who climbs Fuji is a wise man, he who climbs twice is a fool.” The ascent was fine and dandy and the views were gorgeous but on the way down all I could think of was “I want off of this rock.” My choice of climbing conditions also weren’t the best I think and it took me a good few days to really recover from this.

Anyway that's it for now.

Ja mata ne.