Fuji-san

Interesting experience. I had heard about it, as a must for long-term stays in Japan/Tokyo including summer: climb Mount Fuji and observe the sunrise from there... together with 10000 more people. What??? I thought we were climbing a mountain... 10000 people hiking up? Two ideas came to my mind at this point: either the figure is an exageration or it is not that hard... I was completely wrong. 10000 people is a good figure for that kilometric queue hiking towards the summit during the night... and it was not that easy.

We had to climb from 2305 m to 3776 m. So, around 1500 m, quite a lot. At the beginning, everything is ok, not many people, wide paths, and softer slopes... But, after a while, the paths are thinner, the people who were waiting in the different stations join the way up, the oxygen reduces (and you do notice the difference), and the sunrise is closer. Not everybody reaches the summit before the sunrise, but it is quite ok if you are already around 3500 m as we were.





The worst part was after the sunrise, when everybody who had stopped decided to go up at the same time. It took us a couple of hours to reach the summit, but we did it. And, after eating something up there (good business) and taking a look to the crater of the volcan, time to go down, which was even harder than ascending... At the end, 30 hours without sleeping, and the proud to have reached the ceiling of Japan... and this is just the beginning. I still have more than 5 months left here. :-)


Any way, I agree with the japanese. It's a once-in-a-life experience. There will be no second time, that's for sure. ;)