The careful planning that goes into each and every one of my excursions: Taking a photo of a map from some linked off of Wikitravel. I decided on the popular route starting from Kawaguchiko 5th Station there at the top. I got worried because I started finding websites that states that the climbing season for Mt Fuji ended on the 26h, 17th, or 31st of August depending where I looked! I called two Fuji tourist offices the day I ended up leaving and got confirmation it was okay though.
It's also good to make accomodation preparations, such as taking a photo of a map to a guest house and assuming they will have vacancy.
The exciting start to my journey! ShinSugita Station! 15 minutes from my houseish place of dwelling. I will head out to Shinjuku, Tokyo now, as most of the transportation to the Mt. Fuji area starts from there. I plan to d othe traditional climb through the night to catch the sunrise at the peak, like Brian and EMiliy did the week before. SO I'm planning to begin my climb at 10pm this evening.
The 2 hour bus from Shinjuku to the Kawaguchiko 5th Station. See that guy with the ponytail? We had a great conversation partly in broken Japanese and partly in broken English. It was great. Also the girls in the front looked back at me and giggled a few times.
Here it is, Kawaguchiko Go-gome. Pretty much everything was closed except for this one gift shop that sold these really tacky walking canes with bells on them.
Of course, I went ahead and spent the extra 200 yen for the model with the Japanese flag on it as well. Those vending machines had a cool Cantaloupe-milk drink I just had to get, to prepare for my journey.
And of course, before engaging in any strenuous physical activity, don't forget to eat your Milo! In bar form!!!!
In Japan, a fear I've always had was that there would be some kind of important public announcement or something, and I wouldn't notice it or understand it. In fact, during my training last week, which was held in some classrooms next to a big gymnasium, there was a fire drill, except unlike fire drills I'm used to where there is a lot of advance notice that it is a drill, there was just a Japanese man on the intercom saying, “The second floor is on fire. Get out.”. In Japanese. So I realised something important was going on, but my Japanese was poor enough that I didn't know what to do. Anyway, this sign right at the start of the hiking trail is nice and foreboding. I think it says to cram axes or something...
I start walking! The first of my mostly hourly updates, now at around 9 pm Wednesday night. Just look at that view!!!
I see the moon!
It's me! And the Moon rules!
That's right! You're not my real dad, Yamanashi Prefecture!
These frog heads know how to boogey.
This is still the lower part of Mt. Fuji, where life can still exist.
You can totally hear those bats! Just listen for the squeaking. Apparently I don't know the difference between a loudspeaker and a microphone, OR I am using my clever ventriloquism skills to use my regular voice and my Japanese lady speaking english voice to talk and also talk into a microphone you can't see, which is connected to the loudspeaker.
It's really tough to convey how awesome this looked at night walking up the mountain.
I choose Ascending route!
I don't think I like my voice. I sound really whiny. Also I always forget that I have the camera on it's side.
Guess what's happening!
There's a cloud. It's moving.
Without flash.
With flash! Part of the big group that I kept passing and then getting passed by when I'd stop to rest. The guy on the left is from the East Side. The guy on the right is saving hundreds of dollars by switching to Geico.
When I say “This doesn't look good at all,” I'm refering the the quality of the video I expect to produce, not the situation. Big clouds smashing into you is awesome.
This what the inside of a cloud looks like, if you have the flash on. It looks like a snowstorm, and that's pretty accurate to how it felt. Really cold, and since it wasn't actually ready to rain, it was just big water droplets all getting whipped around, not just falling down.
The first of several 'huts' on the way up, offering sleep for... a lot of money I think, and food and stuff. The corn and the coffee are two separate items. And it's corn soup, the Japanese Tomato soup.
See?
Yeah those bells got old fast, so I inadvertantly ripped them off.
A very easy command to follow, given the wind and crumbly volcanic rocks to walk on.
I'll throw TWO! That'll tech em to use proper English grammar!
I like it better where you can't understand what I'm saying.
A lot of times there were lots of metal pikes driven into the rocks where it was pretty steep, for us to grab onto to climb up. THis kinda makes it look steeper than it was, but I told you it was really steep, you'd believe me.
Again, it's just 10 C at this point, but if I told you it was -30, you'd believe me.
And this is how high it was at that point.
Yup. I think I'd make a good drifter. I've really got my rambling down.
There you can see the big plastic bag I kept my camera in, and the natural charm that makes me me.
This was a more different, bigger group.
Yeah.
This is Suguru and me. See my long hair?
This is Suguru and me again. And you can't hear me again. BUt yeah this is about 1/3 or so up the mountain, and his two friends had to stay back at an earlier hut and sleep, so he was also going solo, so we teamed up. It was pretty cool.
So here we are at the 8st station.
Okay, flash was a bad idea, but this is the route we are taking shown in blue. RIght now we are at Horaikan, to the left of the red 'Hachigome' shown on the far right of the picture in the middle, or 'Eigth Station' or ”EIghtst Station“
It's gonna be a while before we reach the top of a mountain!
Exactly.
This hut had a restaurant of sorts.
The AWESOME sort! Suguru bought me a bowl of Oshiroku, the super soup made of red beans and rice!
The other people here were more colourful than us.
Still can't remember Suguru's name... That guy offered to take my picture for me. Then he waved secretly! Cool. Look at me bow in apology!
Supposedly they have to haul all the supplies up on tractors. IS it true?
It's a marker that Suguru said was important!
The people in the big group climbing below us were kind enought o form a big S shape for me.
And when asked, they all agreed to quickly run about to make this neato photo for me. They were quite obliging.
Here are some people putting a Yakin (?) on Suguru's and my cool poles, to prove that we spent 200 yen at this hut.
CAN YOU FEEL THE XTREME XCITEMENT?!
Yay me!
We totally did it! We're up at the top! and we only had to eat 3 fellow hikers to do it! Although for a bit there near the end I had to keep pressing my hands between my legs to keep them from falling off, which somehow kept managing to catch the eye of a French woman hiker. But yeah, that's not the smoke from us roasting another hiker in the room, my camera was just so cold it fogged up when we got in. We roasted him way earlier. Suguru ended up heading back down soon after this, and since his fingers got even more frozen than mine, which I didn't think could happen, I got him a bowl of ramen to thank him.
And here is a guy from Colombia who is also a Mechanical Engineer working in Japan, and some of his French friends sitting to the left, ()But no the French hiker I mentioned earlier. I'm not even sure if she was French actually.)
I actually like the camera better like this. So yeah despite the constant pre-rain from the clouds, freezing cold, volcanic ash and dust getting blown in my eyes (And a few rocks in my face) and winds that did at time push me around quite few feet like that sign, I made it up to the top. Well not the EXACT top, that's 30 minutes around the other side of the crater, but it's pretty much the same height and all this area here with the shrine and this rest house are on the top. SO yeah a few hourly updates got skipped there at the end since I was more concerned with remaining alive at that point.
So yeah I made it up here and ended up staying for... maybe 2 hours or so. We arrived at 6am, an hour past sunrise, since I ended up going considerably slower than I would have alone that's a (9 hour total journey), but when dawn did hit, all we could tell was that the gray could all around us got slowly lighter in colour, so we didn't miss anything by not being at the top.
Here are Ma xiaoli and Hu zhiyang, two medical student from CHina who are studying... or working at a university,.. in Tokyo. They were really cool and we talked about The Bahamas and life in Japan for a while.
Here is a photo Hu took of me, because she thought my pose was great. That's the only position I could find where my legs didn't immediately cramp up. But overall, I didn't feel very tired or have sore legs since I went up at a bit of a slower pace than normal.
Here's me with the best 400 yen glass of hot sweetmilk money can buy.
THe kind of restaurant where you pay money with food. I gave em some leftover hiker for some more bean soup.
Here's me playing my DS ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's me getting engrossed in my game ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's me getting excellent reception on my cellphone ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's me playing Wii ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's a Zaku II mobile suit taking heavy damage from Konoha's own shadow ninja Shikamaur and Scizor ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's me holding Mt. Fuji ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's some kind of thing on Mount Fuji's behind ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's me holding the most famous Pokemon ever ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI! go ditto!
Here's me mocking the reccomended equipment to take such as sunscreen ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
Here's me contemplating my Pirate heritage and Ninja lifestyles ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI!
I had so many other things I wanted to do that I brought in my backpack but I FORGOT once I got to the top. I had Bahamian flag stickers I was gonna paste on everything, a Bahamian flag to plant, some balloons to inflate and release, a bunch more food to eat, and all sorts of stuff but I FORGOT! Well here are some views from Mt Fuji you could see if it's not enshrouded in a raging stormcloud.
And here are some great pictures.
Yup, the essential meal to eat on top of Mt Fuji. Not cheap stuff, only the PREMIUM for me ON TOP OF MOUNT FUJI! So after I while I decide to head back, since the post office at the top I was planning on mailing some postcards from is closed this time of year... A few days too late...
I'm climbing down it.
Looking back up at the top. THose are the toilets I think.
THAT'S the french hiker who may not be french on the right there.
I like clouds.
GOing down, the clouds would keep shifting and sometimes you could catch a glimpse of something that's not a cloud. I think I said this in my previous video entry but I doubt you could make it out amongst my ramblings.
BAM!
Here's one of many torii (Those big wooden gates that let you know you're in Japan) that I saw climbing Fuji san, but the other were completely packed with coinds, many corred or all melty, this one barely had any, so imagine if someone loaded a machine gun with Japanese coinage and just went ccrazy go nuts all over some torii, and that's what the other ones looked like. There's no photos of those because it was during the part where I wanted to stay alive.
What's that? (besides that famous hiker of indeterminate origin)
After giving that hiker my map and some direction which after a few minutes walking I began to doubt the accuracy of, I got down far enough where thec clouds kept parting more and more frequently, and also more awesomely.
Luckily the view wasn't clear the whole time on the way up, or you would have to look at way more of these.
And more and more yellow flowers satrted popping up. Not started to pop up in any fixed space relation to time, but if you kept a fixed time amoved spacially down the mountain, they would appear to po up, assuming the framerate of your eyes was slow enough.
And now lots more of these.
I think that they are cool.
Another torii! And no, it's not the finish point. I'm going down a different route on a different side of the mountain because I want to go to that Hakone hot spring area to realx after doing this, and it's slightly closer to the top, and I'm going faster since I'm alone, and I ran at some points, and did some other cool stuff, but that's just one of the huts/
I was pretty much between two layers of clouds at this point, with another filler layer in between that came and went. Like a big oreo with someone sucking out the creme filling and then spitting it back in and then changing their mind again.
Clouds.
There are even more mountains in Japan than just mount Fuji.
Again! I didn't move at all!
Yeeeeeeeah...
It's a cloud! And I'm talking!
Yellow flowers.
Yellow flowers, widescreen version.
I am actually walking towards that place, I'll reach it eventually.
It's just so hard to stop myselfy from stopping when I can look at this.
All hazey and whatnot.
It's the same little shrine Brian and Emily saw when they went down the mountain! Only unlike me, they weren't intending to go down this side of the mountain when they went the week before. I guess a lot of other people had enough of their bells too.
Those people are trying to blend in with the flowers, but I found them.
I think this is a different hut than that hut that you saw forever.
That little patch of parking lot over the right is where I'm headed. It looks so close, but I think it's still well over an hour or so before I get there.
It's me! With a cloud backdrop!
Look how happy I am!
I can't even keep my eyes open for a photo that I myself am taking. Wow.
My dignified look.
Smirking Sean!
The classic smile.
Now cycle back and forth bewtween all of these now! I command it!
Lookit that cloud!
There are clouds behind me! Wow!
Now you can see some mountains.
I'm hiding!
Mountains and clouds!
And again!
I didn't bother taking off the headlamp. A little dissapointed that although the 3 LEDS stayed in great working condition even in the rain, the Xenon bulb burnt out the first step I took onto the trail.
That one is king of the clouds.
I don't know what's going on here.
It's a machine! I think it's wind powered...
A cave that I may or may not have holed up in.
And now that familiar colour, green returns once again. Well it didn't really return, I efectively returned to it.
Here is a 3 photo montage looking down the mountain.
Well actually that was just the first of the three. Remember how the path appears to branch into two here, one still going perpendicular to the slope of the mountain, and one going straight down.
And that was the second.
Makes a great desktop!
This poor little bell shrine is not doing so well.
This one is just too cool!
SO there is a nother photo of it!
Okay, no more cloud photos.
Trying to decide whether to go down this straight down path of the other longer, safer looking one.
Oh there's a tattered 'Keep Out' sign on the straight down path. Guess that settles that!
Straight down path it is!
Here is a view looking abck up at the top of the path, shortly after starting it. That's because I discovered that instead of prudently choosing each step and using my cane to halt my momentum, I could shoot down the slope not by running, but by 'dirt skiiing' as I call it. ALthough it felt exactly like rollerblading. Each step would carry me forward about 5 feet becasue of the loose, thick volcanic ash and dirt. It was so cool.
My shoes after doing that. WOrth it!
My face after doing that.
Trees again! I must be close!
See, technically this is a photo of the mountain, not the clouds.
A very appreciatedsentiment, as at this point I had been trotting in this forest following these signs, growing more and more sure they would lead me to my doom and I would never see a vending machine again.
I guess it's really a forest.
I took the yellow line up, and the red one down.
My shoes after a guy pressure washed them for me. WHile I was wearing them. It stung, but it was cool.
My mushroom udon soup! This is at the SUbashiri 5th station, where I'm gonna wait a few hours for a bus heading towards Hakone for some hot springs.
There were so many mushrooms in this soup, you don't understand.
Are those thin noodles? No! More mushrooms! I counted at least 9 different varietis. Japan knows it's mushrooms!
Not as impressive looking at it felt.
See, I'm still technically on Mt Fuji, so I got in some of the stuff I forgot to do at the summit. But even here I forgot a few things... Use the Zoom in button n the top right corner to see more geekiness!
Here's the top of my cane. The flag turned pink and one of it's strings snapped ,and the bells lasted even shorter.
Here's the bottom. A well travelled cane. Plus it has some Japanese branded onto it at different stations on the way up.
And now me on the bus towards Hakone. Yes, I took this photo. Hakone photos soon to come! Oh and when I got back to my room after the trip, I got responses to some emails I sent asking about the climbing season for Mt Fuji! And they all said it was over! Ha!
