Fujisan Noborimashita

needless to say, the entire experience took some time to digest. i also simply haven't had time to sit down at the computer and attempt to meticulously recall every pertinent detail of my trip to shizuoka to you, the loyal masses. i apologize for the delay. truly the sheer magnitude of both the event and the mountain itself has made chronicling the adventure quite the daunting task. i would have thought that nothing could be more difficult than the 10 hour climb that i made, but the idea of sitting down and expressing my feelings about it actually seems more challenging. in an attempt to be honest with my memory, i haven't consulted jacob's blog on the ordeal, but if you're interested in his recolllection of the same event, it can be found here. i'm sure that i'm forgetting a lot of things so reading his side of the story will fill in a lot of gaps. i look forward to reading it after i am done with this massive entry-to-be.

i feel i would be committing a grave injustice to my own experience if i simply produced a virtual tour of the climb by way of this blog instead of honouring the memories that made the triumph unique to me in anecdotal events. so forgive me if i refrain from mentioning the details you might be expecting to hear from someone who has just conquered the summit of a world-renowned peak.

last weekend was a nation-wide holiday in japan called obon, a japanese-buddhist festival which is a time that people return to their hometowns to honour their dead ancestors. by its very nature it is a peaceful, reflective time and a time to be with family. i have heard it compared to the mexican observance of "el día de los muertos". this makes traveling anywhere in japan difficult because the transit systems are all bogged down with weary pilgrims. my pilgrimage was quite different, as (to my knowledge) i have no predecessors in japan and could take the weekend as a well-deserved holiday from work.

my journey begins early in the morning on saturday august 13th, my brother shane's birthday. i had stayed up the entire night on friday attempting to finalize my preparations and ensure i had everything packed. the shinkansen trip went off without a hitch and jacob met me in shizuoka. we would climb fuji the following day.

jacob is stationed in fukuroi, a small city in shizuoka prefecture over an hour from the base of mt. fuji. the first night i visited him we took it easy and got started the next morning, well-rested and ready to go. we started the climb from an area known as a "fifth station," an area part way up from the base of the mountain that you can access via bus. some fifth stations place you far enough up the mountain to climb to the summit in about 4 hours. being the healthy young men that we are, jacob and i opted for the longest and most unforgiving climb from gotemba, which is clocked at 7-10 hours in climbing time. we made incredible time the whole way up, but a few times decided we would give ourselves extended rest periods.

forgive the aside, but i should take a moment here to note how small my world really feels. i trained for my current job in nagoya, where my company cycles all the trainees through before sending them off to their job placement. i met a couple of the trainees in the group that followed my group on one of my last days in nagoya. well, when jacob and i were on the bus from gotemba station to the fifth station, the bus stopped for reasons unclear and two other white people got on an otherwise empty bus with us. sure enough, they turned out to be two people who recognized me before i recognized them, from the nagoya training group. their names are cole and tracy, and they were climbing fuji that same day. small world, huh?

at the onset of our ascent, around 5:00pm, an old lady at the first rest station informed us that there were two cute girls climbing ahead of us, and that if we sped up we could surely catch up to them. we thanked her for being thoughtful and we all enjoyed a laugh. the first leg of the climb was really exciting. we couldn't see the peak anywhere in front of us because it was obscured by the clouds. a number of times we located what we believed to be the true top of the mountain only to have something more massive revealed to us beyond it. but we were full of energy and unwavering in our pursuit. dressed in light clothes at the bottom with a full pack of winter gear in our backpacks, we were sweaty messes as we tried to hurry out of the humidity that hovers at low altitudes. there is a soon-to-be famous photo of jacob that i took which shows the stripes of sweat on his shirt where the backpack was.

the early climb was simple enough, mostly soft soil and volcanic gravel. we caught up and surpassed the aforementioned females, who were slow climbers and even if they were to make good company they would have slowed us down to an irreparable pace. we had a mountain to climb here. the sunset was happening behind the mountain fuji looked beautiful and epic in twilight silhouette. we couldn't wait to see what the sunrise was going to be like from the top, which was the main point of the pilgrimage. as light faded, we knew that the bulk of the climb would be done in the pitch black of night and that fact alone offered its own unique challenges you might not normally encounter climbing a mountain. fortunately, there were no sheer sides or cliff faces where we were climbing so we really only faced the peril of exhaustion and the cold. and, of course, we had a flashlight.

we climbed and climbed and climbed. when dusk enveloped us, we estimated that we had passed quite a few people along the way and felt like we were making really good time. we were wary of going too fast, as we knew it would mean an even longer time at the top of the mountain in the cold while we waited for te sun. i remember the exact moment when all of a sudden we felt like we had outclimbed the grip of urban reality. there was a sudden silence. no sounds of technology at all, and the cities below us had shrunk to faintly lit patches across the landscape. to be in japan and not hear traffic or the pulse of metropolis was refreshing to say the least.

we climbed towards the night sky and the clouds began to thin out and revealed a sky of brightly burning stars. living in himeji makes it easy to forget about the billions of stars out there because they are bled out by the cityscape. but here, part way up the epic fuji, we were afforded a view of the constellations and witnessed quite a few shooting stars that made the journey all the more magical. it was all so epic, and i felt like i was a part of some really long, old and important story, attached to a part of japan that was significantly older than the markings of japanese early culture. i have since seen photos of mt. fuji from space and realize just how incredible this mountain must have been throughout the ages. it's like japan's oldest and most significant castle.



a few times during the climb jacob and i heard the sounds of massive explosions happening over the foothills to the east of us and as night fell we would seem huge balls of fire that appeared to be hovering in the distance. at first we had no idea what they were, but were taken by their intensity and confused by the repetition. imagine fireworks going off that don't spread and fade, but rather hover in an incredibly bright yellow glow for 20 seconds at a time. when i finally mustered up the courage to ask another climber in broken japanese, i think he tried to explain that they were like fireworks but a part of the seasonal night festivals happening in the fuji area. we were so far away and yet the intensity of the light was staggering. i snapped a picture or two. shortly after this, we were able to see actual fireworks going off farther in the distance. it's so neat to see something like that from above and far away. they seemed so small and we could only find them on the horizon when they were at their brightest point. we were higher up than the reach of the fireworks, so in essence we were looking down on them. truly spectacular.

while we had made all of the arrangements before climbing to ensure a comfortable and safe journey, we under-packed with regards to food because we were told that there would be food available at the rest stations along the way. this turned into a sham, unfortunately, as we weren't on trail for tourists so when we did find a rest station it was usually just holding an old man and some tired climbers who were willing to pay the extra $55 to sleep for a little while on the way up. we did manage to purchase a $6 cup of coffee, served in an old jar and made with nescafe crystals. again, sham. my advice to anyone thinking of climbing fuji is to pack lots of food, water, and maybe even a thermos of something delicious and hot to enjoy as the night and altitude steal the warmth right from your bones. by the end of the trip, we were labelling mt. fuji as sham-a-yama (yama being japanese for mountain) because of how hungry we were and the way we were gouged by rip-off deals the whole way up and down.

we rested a number of times towards the top, made a few movies with the digital camera and took pictures when the light would allow for it. one particularly humourous movie was done blair witch-style with the flashlight as jacob and i describe the shooting stars.

we reached the summit at around 3:00am. the previous ten hours were really catching up with us, and the top of the mountain was freezing cold and really windy. i found a thermometer attached to a utility shed up there which stated that it was around 2°C. i hadn't brought a toque with me so i had turban-wrapped my scarf around my head to keep warm. sunrise couldn't come fast enough. at one point we were embraced in a man-cuddle beside a tank of kerosene to keep warm while we waited for the sun to rise. there was absolutely nowhere to hide form the cold, as all the buildings that weren't charging a ridiculous amount of money just to keep warm were locked down until morning when an overpriced morning meal could be sold to all of the ragged pilgrims. the sky got really bright in the east around 4:15am, i think, and jacob and i used the new found daylight to find a better vantage point to watch the sunrise on the east corner. it was breathtaking. we somehow managed to regroup with tracy and cole, the two teachers we ran into on the bus ride from gotemba station.

we did it. dekita, as they say in japanese. our pilgrimage complete, we felt like heroes. jacob treated the journey up as a chance to quit smoking for good, like frodo and sam ascending up mount doom to toss in the one ring. i just wanted to see if i could do it, and it was high up on my list of things to do while in japan. so it was finished. great. we were feeling good, though really hungry and sleep deprived. we thought that the descent would be easy, but it turned out to be almost as difficult as the ascent. while gravity was on our side for the return journey, the rocks in the path and the crowds of people made the journey back to the bus stop a 4 hour ordeal. the terrain doesn't really afford you the opportunity to go barrelling down the mountain in a sprint, so you have to be careful to dodge both the rocks and the old ladies as you descend. it also got hotter as we approached the ground, wearing away at our patience and stamina. it sure felt good to get off of that mountain in the end.



and fuji was thus conquered. two 25 year-old guys vs. one big rock. it was a true pilgrimage and i'm glad i did it, though now i see why the japanese have a saying that a wise man climbs fuji once, but only a fool would climb it twice. it takes so much out of you that you really get a sense of your own impermanence and mortality, but you gain such an appreciation for the breadth of your journey and the natural beauty that the earth paints all around us.