Wally Nes’ Blog

After first having gotten used to typing with english layout on a japanese keyboard I am typing this on a French Azerty keyboard. Oh Joy.

This weekend the plan was, again, to climb mount Fuji (or Fuji-san as they call it here). And with the extra long weekend we were bound to succeed this time. You know, in the interest of cultural discovery I should really find out why monday was a national holiday.

Saturday however, we would not depart as Robin planned to make us Belgium Waffles. Rich cultural experience . . . . . Belgium Waffles . . . .  tough one.

So, sunday the grand adventure would commence. After having thoroughly checked stuff we were confident we would make it work this time. We showed up a day early to make sure we had bus tickets but fate could not be as accomodating as all that, now could it. The office had closed 5 minutes earlier (seriously, 5 minutes on the dot). But, all was well, coz we had checked stuff.

There being a finite amount of busses and this being a national holiday I figured it would pay off to show up on time to buy some of the equally finite amount of tickets. This proved to be a most intelligent thing to do, as we arrived just in time to buy the last two tickets. A quick headcount however, revealed we needed 3.

Something something careful plan never survives first contact with the enemy. Some wise guy said that once.

So we bought tickets for the next bus (insert 2 hour delay of plan here). We took the bus to mount Fuji and seeing the weather after having reached the base we decided to stay on the bus ’till the fifth station and climb on from above the clouds. That version is very nicely worded I think.

This bus was the same bus as the one we’d missed and ergo it would fit into our plans nicely. The information provided to me by the Lake Kawaguchi Tourist information couln’t be wrong. And likely, it wasn’t. It was just that the bus we’d discussed wasn’t the one we’d bought tickets for. That would’ve been too perfect.

So we reached our destination . . . . . and passed it. Our initial plan was to climb the entire route. Seeing the weather in combination with our, now pressing, time problem we weren’t too sad about having to abandon this option though.

Most climbers start at the half-way point at the so called 5^th station now. It is the end of the tree line and I suspect we missed quite a pleasant walk up there. The first half goes through nice wooded areas at a gentle slope, it provides the hiker with a pleasant warm up . . . . or in case of last weekend, a nice oppertunity to drench oneself. Perspective is important

The actual climb commenced. Let me be the first to inform you (if you’ve never heard this before, that is) climbing Fuji-san isn’t for everyone. Don’t let the fact that 80-year olds and 8-year olds climb this fool you. It is a HARD climb. If there weren’t 1000+ people climbing it every day I would seriously advise against climbing it without a decent amount of experience. It is a hard climb, bringing oxygen is advised, much of the path is on shifting volcanuc rock/pebble. People fall often and sometimes hard. As it stands, there’s always people about to pick you up, but if this was any other mountain: Don’t just go up and climb it. Chapeau to the 80-year olds though.

This is probably a good point to upset the chronological order of this story and tell of the imperial garden I’d visited Saturday. While the gardens don’t bring that much relevance to this tale the enormous sunburn/heatstroke I got does.

So, heatstroke and probably altitude sickness. While the climb itself is over 1,4 km on the vertical, this adds neatly to the 2.3 km you get earlier that day on the bus form Tokyo. But, I’ll keep stories of my throwing up and feeling generally miserable off ’till later in this story . . . Though I suppose this spoils much of the ending.

On the mountain one will find all sorts of people. As stated before, we have young and old. But we also have Nihonjin and Gaijin, jolly and grumpy, sane and otherwise. There is a fair share of what can only be: Stag-night activity.

On the mountain we met:

l        A man in shorts and a hoody

l        People in suit

l        More people in suit

l        People with business suitcases

l        People with flip-flops

l        People with kitty-ears

l        Karaoke singers (oh wait, that was us)

l        Non selected Vulcanus applicants

l        A man in a suit with getas on

The actual climb isn’t all that interesting, it’s a lot of putting one foot in front of the other. In that respect it’s a lot like walking really, just a bit harder on the legs and lungs. But the view is quite spectacular. As said, we started above the treeline, which means you can always see as far as the next cloud. This cloud will limit visibility to anywhere between 20 cm and 400 km. The first one is more fun though.

Climbing mount Fuji, even in the off season (which started 2 weeks ago and means DRASTIC reduction of populace) means you will be climbing in a crowd. The Japanese do everything in groups and this is no different. It felt at times like early morning traffic though at first it’s a welcome chance to slow your pace down for a second and catch your breath, and it’s just dead funny to see the « Follow the umbrella » mentality here. Though umbrellas here are brightly lit canes.

We made our way to a station on the 8^th level, which was at 3300 metres and were welcomed by shouts of « Hi Karaoke » One of the best parts of a grueling climb, for me, has always been that the food tastes so damn good afterwards. Of course Japan is different in so many ways, and this is no exception We hit the sack at 8.

The reason you climb Fuji-san isn’t to climb Fuji-san, it’s to see the sunrise. A most noble pursuit . . . . .  sooooooo  . . .  . 2:15 the alarm clock rang. Wheeeeeeee, I can tell you, rarely have I been more of a joyfull springy duracell bunny as I was at that moment. It’s 2:15, I haven’t slept, I feel sick to my stomach, have a headache and the world spins noticably more then normal. Let’s climb!

Pitch black, lamp on my head I join . . . a queue?

It’s 2:15, I’m on the side of a vulcano and there are enough people on the track to have a Rush-hour-Tokyo-subway feel to it. WTF. We soon overtake them though and join the ranks of faster climbers in front. A noticable achievement on my part as the trail is actively bucking and rearing to get me to fall off (I have since been told this was most likely due to some hallucination I was experiencing at the time. This even seemed like a definite possibility at the time and some part of my brain even noted that a wise man would probably have turned back at that point. Not wanting to upset your understanding of me: I didn’t turn back). Long story short: We reached the summit: Yeah us. It’s now 04:00, the sun will rise in 30 minutes, it’s several degrees below zero and the wind is murder. Also: It’s the top, so there isn’t a great deal of cover. We knew we should’ve brought gloves, we just hadn’t been able to find any in our size. We should’ve looked harder.

The sun rose, whoopie, I’ll post pictures later (Again, I’ll get my hands on a laptop sometime or other). Saw the caldera, threw up, got my ass down the slope where I prompty fell asleep in the arms of a fair maiden. All is well in the world.

Oh right, I’m still 1100 metres above where my bus leaves from . . . .  crap.

Between the three participants that made up our little group we’ve had maybe 14 hours of sleep between us and we’ve covered 2km pure vertical difference. We’re good. Some hours, amusing anecdotes and themesongs later we stride (read:stumble) into the 5^th station. Now, the loyal readers amongst you may feel some anticipation as to how our return trip got fucked up

And who am I to shatter your hopes. The Bus that took us here will run only on Saturdays, Sundays and National Holidays. Today is the last one in the list and according to the people here it will probably run. Oh, for tickets: You call this number. It’s remarkable that for all its differences I was able to pick out the Japanese dead telephone sound in half a second.

Luckily there’s local busses that leave for Lake Kawaguchi and that’s a fairly big town that will no doubt have some connection to Tokyo. This was true, and the connection was ideal to get a bit of lunch in between, and another 2 hours of sleep. The only bus with any spaces left would be leaving at 4.

When preparing to come to Japan, someone made the joke that I would at least be in a country where the trains run on schedule. I’ve had little cause to complain on topic of trains, busses however . . . . are defenitely run by some branch of the NS (Dutch railways) . . . or maybe just this one.

It also took a tad longer reaching Tokyo then it had to get to Fuji-san. 3.5 hours on 100 kilometres is a  . . . . good thing?

I’ll leave you with the same words I left my friends in Tokyo with: That was great fun, good sport and a lovely experience. Now fuck off: I’m going to sleep.

Quote of the day:

A Wise man climbs Fuji-san once in his life

A fool climbs Fuji-san twice

 -Anon

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 3:05 am and is filed under Fun and Games, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.