Climbing Mt. Fuji

Just about every webpage I could find about climbing Mount Fuji recommended taking the Fuji Kyuko bus from Shinjuku straight to Gogome--the fifth of eight stations up Fuji, and the standard starting point for a climb to the summit.

They make it sound so easy. I don't know what these people are thinking.

Don't get me wrong--the bus does have its attractions. I do not doubt that, as claimed, it is pretty much the cheapest and fastest way to get to Mount Fuji.

On the other hand, during the very peak of the climbing season, Fuji Kyuko runs six, count 'em, six of these buses every day. They tend to be somewhat crowded. You cannot (as some of these pages strongly suggest) simply waltz up to the ticket window on the day of your trip and buy yourself a ticket on the next bus. Rather, you need to plan your trip (there and back) days in advance.

So, first you need an ability to plan ahead. Good luck with that! An additional difficulty would be posed by the marked absence of any English whatsoever on either of the relevant websites. (This National Geographic article links to the entirely Japanese online reservation system, perhaps assuming that the culturally enlightened readers of NG must necessarily be fluent readers of Japanese.)

As it happened, though, none of this really mattered anyway, since while I was making the reservations I somehow came under the impression that our 4 day weekend started on Tuesday rather than Wednesday. Oops.

When I discovered my error (having been informed of it by the bus driver on the bus) I kinda felt like crawling to the nearest izakaya to drink away the two days that were meant to be spent on Mount Fuji. Luckily, though, Kate was there to egg me on, so after some effort, and having looked none of this up on the internet ahead of time (gasp!), I got us there anyway.

I'll run through it for the benefit of the websurfers who (judging from their referrals) occasionally drop by this site looking for actual information: Take a limited express on the Chuo main line from, say, Shinjuku (or wherever--Tachikawa actually works better for us) to Otsuki. Transfer to the Fujikyu train, take to the end of the line at Kawaguchiko, then take the bus the rest of the way to Fujisan Gogome.

To be sure, it's a bit more expensive, and takes a bit longer. But you can do it entirely on the fly (I recommend jiyuseki, or non-reserved seating on the Chuo), and the company can be more... colourful.

We had been planning to hike up Mount Fuji at night, to catch the sunrise at the summit. What with the last minute changing of plans, we ended up on the very last bus to Fuji Gogome (shortly after 9pm), which runs according to an anarchic seating system. No one was left behind at the Kawaguchiko stop--and there were a lot of people there. The aisles were full (just about everyone chose to sit), and one woman up front was sitting in the stairwell. My half-hearted attempts to take a nap on the bus ride were stymied by a tourist from England who kept shifting her weight on my leg, which she was using as a backrest, not to mention the Chinese guy from Vancouver sitting next to me who just wouldn't stop talking. And I think some guys in the back might have been setting off fireworks or something, because on a couple of occasions there was a burst of cheering, and I turned back to see a cloud of white smoke filling up the back half of the bus.

All in all, a pretty good way to build some excitement for the upcoming trek.

We enjoyed clear skies that night, so not only did we get a full view of the stars, but also of the Perseid meteor shower (which Kate knew to look out for thanks to SpaceWeather.com), not to mention Venus and a crescent moon side by side.

Our plan to see the sunrise at the summit was jeopardised by two difficulties. The first difficulty is that everyone and his dog wants to see the sunrise from the summit. Not all of them want to hike up all night, though. Most, it would seem, hike up to the eighth station during the previous day, have a short sleep at one of the "hotels", and get up around 3:30 to resume their journey. And they tend to do this in tour groups. Which is to say, when we made it to the eighth station, at about 3:30, and looked up toward the summit, we found ourselves staring at a solid, zigzagging line of tourists, indentifiable by their wavering flashlights, and the occasional blinkingredbatton-wielding tour leader. This made our final push to the summit rather unpleasant. In order to get around the lines of hikers whose idea of hiking is taking a step every 30 seconds, it's necessary to do rather difficult climbing up sections of the trail that maybe aren't really legitimately considered part of the trail at all.

Compounding this difficulty, in my case, was the return of my altitude sickness (which just about stopped a preteen me from reaching the summit during my first trip up Fuji). My arms and legs served me just fine as we hoofed our way to the top, but my head kept protesting... it turns out that if you need to concentrate really hard on finding handholds and footholds, and are also kinda stubborn, it's not so hard to ignore a little headache.

Kids: if you're climbing up a mountain and you start having a headache, stop climbing the bloody mountain.

The headache got pretty much unbearable at the summit, and was shortly followed by nausea. Let's just say that the next few hours were rather unpleasant, and that the Fuji policy to not leave anything behind on the mountain has never had such grim consequences. And talk about the kindness of strangers--we got a free can of oxygen and a container full of wipes because of my performance.

But for all of that, it was worth it. The night sky, occasionally punctuated by streaks of light, looking down at the distant city lights, watching the moon peak over the horizon, walking right through the clouds, seeing the sunrise from the summit--well, the pictures make that last experience look pretty good, though I wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate it at the time.

Currently, my legs feel OK, and somehow my feet managed to stay blister free, but there's something wrong with my left elbow, which I never even walked on.

Next: Obon, Ibaraki, "the family tomb".