Climbing Mount Fuji

 I'm gonna climb Fuji on Saturday, again! Whoohoo!! “Again?” you say. Why yes, for the fourth time in fact. “But isn’t there that saying ‘you are a fool not to climb mount fuji once but a fool to climb it twice.’ Then I am a fool. But less of a fool than the first time that I went up fuji. The first time I went up, I was dumb. Really dumb. And almost died. So why oh why would I try to do it again. And again. And again?! Because look at how gorgeous this is!!! 

And I suppose I just like to challenge myself. Aside from the almost dying part, climbing fuji was breath taking, which dying would have been the ultimate in breath taking, but the elated feeling of accomplishment and awe all mixed into one has hooked me and keeps me going back every chance I get. So let me begin the tale of my harrowing first climb up to the top of this 3776 m monster. 

It was the summer after my first year working in Japan. I had been here exactly a year, and was feeling very settled and confident in my new space. A coworker of mine who later became one of my closest friends decided she wanted to climb to the summit of Fuji while her family was visiting and invited me along. Having only recently climbed mount Haruna, a mere 1440 meters tall, this was to be my first real experience climbing a mountain on my own. A mountain that required preparation and packing. However, remember I was naive and dumb. I did not do this. I did not look anything up about Fuji AT ALL. I figured, oh it's cold on fuji, I will bring a sweater and some calorie mate bars. This is fine. I let my co worker book the bus tickets and figure everything else out so we just needed to meet up at a certain time in Shinjuku and be on our way to the majestic mountain together. We could skip up the mountain tralala. I guess I never really imagined skipping up the mountain. I wasn't the most fit person and my friend was by all means not fit. Her desire to climb the mountain was driven by the urge to prove everyone including her family members wrong when they said that she couldn’t do it. At the time, not having known her very well, I honestly wasn’t sure she could do it either. This is probably why, when we landed at the fifth station and had a look around, I decided to just make my own way up the mountain and we could find each other at the top in the morning or back down before our scheduled bus time if she couldn’t make it up to the top. *cough* bad idea* cough* Oh was this a bad idea. Oh was I ever so lucky in the end. Lucky because most nights it rains on fuji, it did not. Lucky because it was a negative 4 degrees celsius at the summit when I arrived. I did not have a rain coat. I did not have more than a very wooly sweater. I did not have protection from the bitter ice cold wind. I do not know why I did not turn back. I must have been dazed by the full moon following me up the mountain, steadily climbing in the sky while I climbed up the mountain side. The sky was crisp and clear. I could see everything around me without a headlamp. I may have been the only person on that trail without one. I was also the only person on that trail without enough sense to even read up on what climbing Fuji would be like. In the end though, the only thing I needed really truly and honestly was warmer clothing. Steadily walking on, one foot in front of the other, my body heat kept me feeling hot and heated until each time I stopped to rest. That's when I would realize how much I had sweated and just how quickly the bitter wind ate through my layer of body heat. And with each station that I passed, it only grew colder. So finally when I reached to top, I almost wanted to go back down only to climb again to stay warm. A small glowing sign said that it was -4 degrees celsius. If I had been smart, I could have crammed myself in with the other well suited up souls huddled in the heat of the huts. I was not smart. I was a scared foreigner. Instead I stood outside staring at the stars. The constellation of Orion was hanging in the air and it was so clear you could see the cluster of stars from Orion's nebula near the belt. When I looked out across japan, there were thunder clouds below us, flashing sparks of electricity in the night. But when I bent my fingers I couldn't really feel them anymore. So I went and hid in the toilet like the scared foreign kid that I was. Between the two stalls there was space to put your heavy pack and that is where I hunkered down. Shivering, but mostly protected from the wind, I stayed tucked out of the way while others passed in and out of the stalls. This was when my saviours came in. Two Japanese guys took a look around the little shack that housed the restrooms, saw me, shrugged me off as just a foreigner and began to strip down nearly to their underwear. I was unsure if the had noticed me or not, and wanting to make the situation ever so slightly less awkward than being talked about as if I was a ghost, I asked in Japanese the only question that came to my mind. “How many shirts ARE you wearing??!” the two may have been undressing to their skivvies, but to get that far it took them nearly five minutes of peeling off layer after layer of sweaty long sleeve shirt. They clearly had known it would be freezing. And also knew to have spare dry clothes. So as they put back on 12 shirts, we had enough time to get acquainted and for them to figure out that I was possibly going to die if I didn't warm up a bit more. Both absolute gentlemen, they offered me literally a shirt off their back, lucky the top layer so as not to be sweaty, an unused raincoat, and a towel. I went from teeth chattering to being able to finally breath in again because the plastic raincoat cut the wind and the few more layers latched on to my own heat. I was saved. The three of us ventured out outside and found a nice little spot to wait for the sun to rise above the clouds. It was glorious. I was in such awe I almost fainted. Oh wait no, that was low blood sugar. And my mouth suddenly was so dry the instant I stuck the bready little calorie mate stick into my mouth that I couldn't even choke it down. That is when my two saviours yet again came to the rescue, this time with chocolate. They passed me a piece and it nicely melted on my tongue. Those few calories were able to get me off that mountain. Or, at least back down to the fifth station where I had pancakes and a panic attack(nearly). My friend and her family were not at the top of the mountain, and they were also not a the fifth station. My friend also had the bus tickets that were scheduled to leave at 10am. Finally at 9:45 I was able to call her. Apparently there is service at the top because that is where she was, fifteen minutes before our bus. It took her 15 hours to make it up there, but hell yeah she had made it! That also meant she then had over 3 hours of climbing back down. I quickly ran to the bus counter and booked us the last bus back for the day. Then I sat around hoping wishing and praying she could get back in time. 30 minutes before the bus came to carry me off that magical and hectic mountain, I caught sight of my friends brother through the large crowd of tourists bustling around. The five of us scrambled together and at long last settled down on the last bus of the day. Oh what an adventure it had been. 

Moral of this story is to always be prepared, and when you aren’t, then talk to people in their undies.