Japan and Mt. Fuji

Yes! Hiking Mount Fuji was huge on my list of things I wanted to do while living and teaching in South Korea. Due to close proximity the flights were very cheap! However, this trip was not all sunshine and rainbows.

Preparing for the trip:

Apparently, hiking Mount Fuji is an increasingly popular thing to do in Japan. Recently, it has become so popular that the bus tickets to Fuji will sell out within a day. We found this out the hard way. The original plan was to book a very early bus to the mountain, hike up and down in a day, and then stay the night in a little town just off the mountain. Unfortunately, when it came time to book the tickets, they were all sold out. We ended up committing to hiking through the night. We borrowed a headlamp and a few handheld flashlights from a friend and packed some warm clothes and felt ready to go!

Day 1:

We landed in Narita International Airport (outside of Tokyo) and the Japanese culture was instantly apparent. There were Mario characters everywhere and Nintendo advertising everywhere. After waiting a few hours, we finally got a bus into Tokyo. Once in Tokyo, we had to wait another couple hours before our bus to the fifth station was ready to go.

Fuji Hike:

We arrived at the fifth station around 7:00pm. We had read that there is a decent probability that you could get altitude sickness if you climb the mountain too fast so, to be safe, we decided to hang around at each station a minimum of 15 minutes. At the fifth station, we spent about 30 minutes. This station had lots of souvenir stores and a few food places. We met a guy from Philadelphia and his friend from Brazil. We would see them again two or three times during the hike. As we were leaving the fifth station, we were stopped by some local volunteers (or maybe they were paid?) who attached a tracking chip to our bags in case something should happen to us. Then we were asked to donate 10 dollars to help the preservation efforts of Mount Fuji. We obliged and were gifted with a little wooden token made from trees on Mount Fuji. Happily, we attached them to our bags and set off into the night.

It took us roughly 30 minutes to get to the sixth station. We hung out here for about 20 minutes and then set out into the dark again. At the seventh station we met a group from Pakistan and a really nice guy from Niger (he was my favorite). He had studied in Canada, spoke excellent English and repeatedly offered to share his food which I did not accept. Up until now, the trail has been relatively easy. It has been a nice and easy uphill walk.

The trip from the seventh station to the eighth station it started to get difficult. At this point we are scrambling up rocks often using both our hands and feet to stay upright. This section of the trail took a little bit over an hour to complete. Here, the temperature had significantly dropped and it was getting really cold. As we continued on, the wind picked up and a light hail started coming down on us. We went into the nearest hut and asked how much it would cost to stay. They said 90 dollars each! No way! We kept trudging until the storm really started to pick up and it felt like people were throwing handfuls of sand into our face. We went into the next hut and decided to sleep even though it cost 73 dollars.

The sleeping situation had a lot to be desired. We slept on plywood floors and were packed into the space like sardines. There were probably 12 people sleeping in a 15 foot space. We left the area after a couple hours of sleep around 2:30. We didn't hike long before we were at the original 8th station where we stayed until about 3:45. When we were about 500 or 600 meters from the top we reached the end of the queue to get to the top. The line moved horribly slow but we were close enough to the top to get the sunrise view which was really beautiful.

We reached the top at about 5:15. It was furiously cold and the wind blew viciously so we only stayed about 15 minutes. The descent took about 3 hours and was fairly easy. The whole way down was loose dirt and somewhat slippery. Once we reached the bottom, we found some pancakes and caught the next bus down to our hostel in Kawaguchiko.

Day 2: We hung out and relaxed in Kawaguchiko. We didn't do a whole lot because we were physically and mentally exhausted from the day before.

Day 3: We catch a bus back to Tokyo. In Tokyo, we went to Shibuya crossing and shopped around and hung out at the busiest intersection in the world! We saw the statue for Hachiko (a very nice dog story that even has a movie based on the events of this dogs life).