Day 6 & 7 - Mount Fuji Climb

Today, we are leaving Tokyo and heading to Mount Fuji for the much anticipated overnight climb. We planned everything around this event since we first decided to go to Japan last December. At first we had wanted to visit in April during the sakura season but after some discussion, we decided to do the climb instead.

It all began when I watched Ian Wright on Globe Trekker on his journey up Mount Fuji. There was something about his eyes that said he had accomplished something very special. While the view up there seemed amazing, I think what did it was the sheer number of people on the mountain with him. I told myself I had to do this someday.

Anyway, Mount Fuji's official climbing season is only from July to August. A whopping 3000 people climb it daily during this season. Most are Japanese as they believe that you must climb it once in your lifetime.

We departed for Fujigoko (Kawaguchiko) from Shinjuku bus station today. It's a less than 2 hour ride from Tokyo. We left Andon late and had a hard time locating the darn bus station. Stranded at the bus stop opposite Shinjuku station, we looked lost and this led to an encounter with what I call the 'helpful Japanese'. An elderly man in uniform came up to us and offered his help. Though his directions were vague and we didn't really understand him, we appreciated his nice gesture.

To cut the long story short, we finally did find the station. I was getting increasingly frustrated anyway coz I haven't had breakfast. But then came another problem. Which bus were we to get on? There was an electronic board that stated vehicle numbers, destination and time but they were all in Japanese. We finally resorted to simply showing random bus personnels our bus tickets. That proved to be the right thing to do as we finally found the right bus. Fortuntaely, I found 5 minutes to make a quick run to the convenience store to grab us some stuff to eat enroute to Kawaguchiko.

The bus took us out of modern Tokyo to the countryside. We know we have arrived when we saw the high rollercoaster rides that belonged to Fuji Q highland. And of course, we were greeted by the first glimpse of Fujisan.

Famished, we quickly dropped off our bag packs at the helpful tourist information centre and took off looking for food. There wasn't that much choice to begin with as Kawaguchiko is really a small town. We settled for this simple, homely cafe place and ordered a beef curry rice (miserable bits of beef but the curry taste wasn't too bad) and a Fujigoko specialty - Hoto noodles. It's like Ban Mian but prolly more hearty with huge chunks of pumpkin, potato, meat and the like.



After lunch, we went back to the tourist info centre and they helped us call our hotel for our free pickup. The annoying thing that happened was that the hotel took more than an hour plus to arrive. Apparently they made a mistake of picking up other people and headed back to the hotel without us. The lady at the tourist info centre felt so bad for us that she gave us a can of coffee each even though it was not at all her fault.

The delay kinda thwarted our plans to rest before our overnight climb. Eventually we ended up with only bout half an hour sleep after getting our stuff ready before we had to head back to Kawaguchiko to catch the bus that would take us to the 5th station.

A 50 minute bus ride took us to the 5th station of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji is divided by 'stations', so you start from the 5th and move on to the 6th, 7th and so forth. The top was supposed to be the 10th station but apparently this season, they 'got rid' of the 9th and 10th stations (more about that later). What's interesting is that you know when you've arrived at a particular station when you start to see mountain huts. Here you can choose to burn a stamp onto your wooden walking stick for 200yen or pay an exhorbitant amount of money to sleep for awhile in there. Another strange thing was that there is not just one say. 7th station. Usually there are a FEW. And guess what, since they got rid of the 9th and 10th, we actually saw an 8.5 one before we reached the top. And darn, we were looking out for that 9th and 10th station tht never came which caused us to reach the top without realising.


Fellow climbers at the 5th station.

We ate a MOS-ish meal of burger and fries here. Also, a special mention about the toilets here. Bearing in mind we were ON a volcano (for goodness sake!), I would guess your toilet won't be your run-of-the-mill kind. Here, when you flush the toilet, instead of the all familiar big flush complete with swooshing sound with gallons of water, you see this strange bluish bubble foam creeping into the toilet bowl in slow motion.


Here we go! Me - still looking fresh.

We started on our journey at about 8.30pm. Pitch dark with a glowing full moon casting an eerie glow on the 5 lakes of Fujigoko below us, me and CK agreed that the whole thing felt surreal.

The trek up got really more difficult after the 7th station when it got really steep. And you had to go on your fours to pull yourself up certain sections. There were metal rails to help you up. Regular doses of oxygen also helped keep us from developing altitude sickness.



We were lucky that the weather tonight was good. Apparently there was a typhoon 2 days before. The wind only got much much stronger after we reached the first 8th station marked by nice red torii gates.



More 8th stations....





I think at about 3am everyone on the mountain started to panic. It was already around 3 plus when we saw the 8.5 station. Less than one more hour to go before sunrise.

The Japanese below started shouting at those at the top to I guess encourage everyone to go faster. The progress was getting slower and slower the higher we got up the mountain as we then ran into complete tour groups. It didn't help that it was also at the 8th station that the Kawaguchiko trail merges with another trail. We forced ourselves to keep going and going as panic started to set in amongst everyone. We only stopped briefly for a whiff of oxygen or a sip of water. No more 5 or 10 min breaks.

It proved to be worth the effort as we reached 9th station (the top and we didn't even know! ) just in time when a spectacular sliver of light first appeared and divided the sky beautifully.



The sun looked very much like a bright egg yolk. Truly a magnificent sight. As the sun rose higher, I asked CK whether he wanted to continue to reach the top. We barely walked a minute or two when we realised, 'Hey! We ARE at the top!' WE ARE AT THE HIGHEST POINT IN JAPAN!

The sun cast beautiful mauve shades in the sky and the mountains below looked just like a painting.



We got our final stamp on our walking sticks that said 'Sunrise at Mount Fuji 2006' ! Another mission I had to fulfill was to post some postcards from the post office on Mount Fuji where it will be earmarked with a special mount fuji stamp indicating it was a card posted from the top. It was quite a long walk to the office as it was on the other side of the mountain. Took me about 45 minutes and not to mention the treacherous road there. Scary.

We started back down the mountain at about 6am and boy, the less said of it the better. The pain on my knees were excruciating and as one fellow climber I met on the way down put it, "It kills all the fun huh?"

We reached the bottom at 9.30am.