Kyoto and climbing Mount Fuji!

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Kyoto, 8th - 11th August 2008

Our journey back to civilisation began early on the 8th, the trip from Ibusuki to Kyoto, roughly 900km, consisted of 4 train rides and took the whole day. Our first train took us from Ibusuki to Kagoshima, where we had a few hours to kill before our next train so we checked out the morning market near the train station, did a bit of window shopping, got some lunch, played on the swings in a local playground and found out that in Japan you need a prescription to buy contact lenses - in China you can tell the optician the strength and type of contact lense you want and they'll sell it to you, no questions asked. I should have stocked up before we left China!

Our second train took us from Kagoshima to Hakata and then the most outstanding thing happened, our third train from Hakata to Shin-Osaka was late! Trains in Japan are rarely ever late, delayed or cancelled. Infact they're so punctual that train tickets have exact departure and arrival times printed on them, so our train being 30 minutes late due to a mega thunderstorm was quite an event! We missed our connecting train from Shin-Osaka to Kyoto because of the delay but our Japan Railpasses meant that it was very easy to get new tickets for the next train to Kyoto.

We arrived at our hostel after our day long journey to find that we were to stay in their annex house 10 minutes away, as their main hostel was full. I was just glad that we had somewhere to stay as it took us ages to actually find a hostel with free beds for the time we were in Kyoto. The annex was a cute little Japanese house set down a little side street just off the main road that had the unique feature of a hidden away staircase to the first floor from the kitchen/diner. There were 3-4 (or maybe there were more hidden away?!) bedrooms in the house and for our 3 nights stay we were the only ones in the house. It was quite nice having the whole place to ourselves, not having to wait to use the kitchen or bathroom and being able to watch whatever we wanted to on tv, which at the time happened to be the Olympics. We unfortunately missed the opening ceremony but during our time in Kyoto we did manage to catch quite a few of the swimming, diving and judo events, as well as whatever events the Japanese atheletes were competing in.

We only had 2 full days in Kyoto, not very long at all but we made the most of our time there. On our first full day we headed to the Tenryu temple set at the foot of the Arashiyama Mountain in the western outskirts of Kyoto. The temple was absolutely gorgeous and understandably so, as before it was converted into temple in 1339 it was originally built as an Imperial palace in the mid thirteenth century. Exploring the bamboo forest next to the temple was amazing, although I personally don't think it should be called a 'forest' since it really wasn't the size of what I would consider a forest to be... but either way, it was fantastic and there was a lot of bamboo. I can only imagine how excited a panda would get at the sight of all that lucious, tall, tasty looking bamboo! A little walk around the temple and bamboo forest area brought much excitement to both myself and Stacy as we got to see our first ever geisha girl being pulled along in a rickshaw!

It was a very hot day that day and 10 minutes after arriving back to the metro station near our little hostel annex house we gave up on the idea of walking to the Imperial Palace gardens and instead we played around on the swings and climbing frame of a little park we came across. It seemed we made a good choice as not only did we have much fun playing around like kids in the playground, with no warning at all, the swelteringly hot sun disappeared and was replaced by a torrential downpour. We managed to find a little shelter under some trees but after a while we did get thorougly soaked. Thankfully we were only a 5 minute walk away from home, proper shelter and dry clothes!

We spent our second and last day doing a little sightseeing in downtown Kyoto. The area near the main station is a very built up and cosmopolitian area and the two Shin Buddhism temples we visited were like seeing a little of old Japan within new modern Japan. The two temples actually used to be one very large temple for Shin Buddhism, the Honganji, but were split into two branches in 1602 to form Higashi Hongan-Ji - The Eastern temple of the Original Vow and Nishi Hongan-Ji - The Western temple of the Original Vow. The founders hall of the Higashi Hongan-Ji claims to be the largest wooden structure in the world (it was very large indeed!) and it is also where you can see one of the long, thick ropes that were made from the donated hair of female devotees of Shin Buddhism to help transport the large beams of timber used in the construction of the founders hall!

The gardens near the temples were closed that day so after a quick lunch stop (sitting outside the temple to eat our homemade sandwiches!) and a little play on the swings in another playground we came across, we headed to the shopping areas of Kyoto for a quick bit of window shopping. Day two in Kyoto was the hottest yet that we'd experienced in Japan and when we looked up the temperature online later that evening we found that the day's high was a scorching 38 degrees C! Ouch! No wonder we were exhausted by the time we got back home. Our last night in Kyoto was spent relaxing at the house, watching the Olympics and consuming as many carbs as possible in preparation for the long climb up Mt. Fuji the next day.

Mount Fuji, 11th - 13th August 2008

And so our time in Kyoto sadly came to an end. We were up early on the 11th to have a big breakfast and check out of our little Japanese house before catching the first of a few trains to Kawaguchiko, the nearest station to Mt. Fuji, topping up our stomachs along the way with the huge tupperware of tuna pasta salad we'd made the night before - we didn't want to run out of energy halfway up the mountain!

A lot of our journey took place on local trains and the last train we took was a Thomas the Tank Engine decorated train, very surreal! We arrived at Kawaguchiko station 5.5 hours after leaving Kyoto at around 4pm and headed straight to our hostel. After packing our daysacks with our warmest clothes (which didn't actually amount to very much) and some food supplies for the climb, we grabbed a quick dinner before taking the 6.30pm bus up to the Kawaguchiko 5th station, the starting point of our Mt. Fuji climb.

Mount Fuji, Japans highest mountain is an active volcano, though thankfully with very low activity (the last time it erupted was in 1710) and is split into 10 stations, the 1st being the at foot and the 10th being the summit and has 4 routes to the summit which are climbed mainly in July and August, the official climbing season, due to the milder weather conditions. The Yoshidaguchi Trail from the Kawaguchiko 5th station is the most popular route to climb as there are many rest huts along the way, although you pay an extortionate amount just to stop and rest for a few hours, as well as being the side that the sun rises on.

Our plan was to climb from the Kawaguchiko 5th station (2300m) to the summit (3776m) through the night so that we could watch the sun rise at the top. It was already dark and a little chilly by the time we arrived at the 5th station a little after 7.30pm and seeing all the other people around us change into warm wind and waterproof clothing I began to get the feeling that we might be a little unprepared for the climb, my warmest item of clothing was a light hooded jumper.

After putting on an extra tshirt we began our climb around 8pm. The beginning section was fairly easy, a slightly inclined dirt path but it slowly got more rocky and steeper, at times we were actually climbing Mt. Fuji, not just walking up it!

We made it to the 7th station from the 5th in a little under 90 minutes, the effort of climbing was enough to keep us warm. However it started to get increasingly colder and pretty soon we were wearing all the clothes we had brought - I was layered up in a vest top, 2 tshirts, a longsleeved tshirt, a light hoodie and had a small towel around my neck as a scarf. And when that wasn't enough we put on our bright yellow ponchos in the hope it'd help keep the warmth in and the wind out, we definately were a sight to be seen! The climb through the night was slow and long and I quite often wondered what possessed us to do such a thing! I was really cold and climbing at that altitude was very tiring so we stopped to catch our breath frequently.

Around 4.30am the sun started to rise and you could see the smallest hint of the horizon changing colour. Watching the sky slowly change from pitch black to a deep dark blue with hints of purple and red was absolutely amazing, we were on Mt. Fuji watching the sunrise!! The number of people climbing with us was just outstanding, all throughout the night we could see lights twinkling behind and ahead of us on the route to the summit, as the other climbers made their way to the top.

We were about 20m from the summit when the sun came up, didn't quite make it to the top but it was still magnificient from where we were. At the top we took a well deserved rest, I was frozen (my lips had apparantly taken on a somewhat blueish tinge) and I was glad the sun was finally out to bring some warmth back into me. We walked around the crater at the summit, taking many a picture along the way. It was about 6am, we'd climbed all night in the freezing cold and we were at the top of Mt. Fuji, I couldn't believe it!

I found the walk back down to be actually more difficult than climbing up! The path zigzagged quite steeply down the mountain and was made of loose gravel and stones, which made the descent treacherous! It took us a good 4 hours to climb down, I fell a good few times along the way on the loose gravel and we were absolutely exhausted when we eventually made it back to the hostel. After a quick shower and a bite to eat we headed to bed for a much needed nap!

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Photos

on our way to tenryu temple
i think we could be lost again...