Arrival in Japan and Mt Fuji

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Japan begins with spending a night in Haneda airport, which is very comfortable for an airport, I've certainly stayed in less well-appointed hostels. We save a night's accommodation costs and take the 9.20am bus direct to Mt Fuji without having to go into the city. The only downside is that this bus isn't covered by our Willer Bus Pass, so it's an added expense, albeit a calculated one, at the end of a financially draining year.
Note for future travels: buses in Japan leave ON TIME. With five or six minutes till scheduled departure there is no sign of the bus. Del decides to go back into the terminal building to the toilet and meanders away with the walk of someone who has been on three relatively long-distance flights in two days with one night spent at an airport. Of course, as soon as she disappears from sight the bus arrives, the passengers, all six of us, line up and have our luggage put aboard. Everyone gets on while I adopt the pose of waiting by the entrance to the bus. With two minutes to take-off I explain that I am waiting for my fiancee who has just gone to the toilet but will be back in one minute. With a minute to go I can sense the Japanese around me getting fidgety. I start to have a bad feeling. Thirty seconds to go and the conductor closes the baggage compartment with a definitive thump and stands near me. Ten seconds to go the information board above the bus displaying its destination and time of departure changes to the next bus. Five seconds to go, the bad feeling is a lot worse.
“Excuse me sir, where is your friend?”
Suddenly, there are three Japanese in uniform, their tone is polite, but just barely, which is full of meaning, where politeness and courtesy are paramount to all interpersonal interactions.
“She's just gone to the toilet.”
I can see this explanation is no longer valid. One of them edges towards the luggage compartment, readying himself to spring it open and haul our bags out. The honour of the bus company seems to be at stake. Honour will not be lost on his watch – I can feel him thinking.
“Shall I go get her?” I stall for time.
“Yes, please sir.” The 'sir' seems forced. “The bus needs to leave.”
I drop our hand luggage, knowing that they will not give me any more leeway than perhaps a minute. I sprint hard down the bus terminal towards the lift heading into the terminal. The lift start to rise three paces before I get there. I punch the call button but it has already departed.
I think that this has to be Delphine or it will be too late. The lift comes down. Sedately.
Delphine! I bang on the glass before the lift has come down to eye-level. She can't see me yet, and startles. It comes lower and she sees my sweating, anxious face. I pry the glass doors with my fingernails. They won't open a second earlier than they're programmed to.
Our eyes meet. I wonder if she can see the bus leaving behind me.
I grab her arm the second the doors open, yank her through, and we leg it back towards the bus as I frantically explain our position.
The bus comes into sight. The luggage compartment is open but nothing has been taken out as yet. I am actually surprised that it is still there.
We kick our hand luggage in and roll onto the bus Indiana Jones style as it pulls away. I think I actually see one of the uniforms running along the side shutting the luggage bay as we depart. We apologise profusely to everyone we see, the driver, the conductor and all the passengers. The uniforms remain tense and don't answer. They are, after all, in charge of a bus that is now two minutes behind schedule. I have time to think that the passengers are the first 'real' Japanese people we have interacted with since we arrived who aren't employees of the airport and who don't have to be nice to us. They smile and nod understandingly, although I am also sure I sense intense bemusement on their part - how anyone could possibly allow themselves to be so late for a bus? Don't they understand the departure time? How strange these people are?

The bus to Fuji-san station takes a couple of hours and is actually quite pleasant for the most part, as we climb higher and enter pine tree-clad hills. We actually get off the bus at Kawaguchiko where our hostel is. It turns out that, due to a 'burst pipe' our dorm-room is no longer available and we are moved to a place opposite the station, which we had seen one the internet as more expensive, although we are paying the same rate as before. Kawaguchiko village (one road, two hostels, three restaurants, bizarrely five supermarkets) is an hour bus ride from Station 5 on Mt Fuji, which really means it is at the very foot of the mountain and is certainly the closest village to it. However, there is no sign of Mt Fuji anywhere. We both study the maps provided by the Tourist Information Office sheepishly, too embarrassed to ask for the staff to point out where Japan's tallest mountain is. Gradually we work out where Mt Fuji should be. It doesn't help at all – the cloud layer begins at the roof of the hostel and the famous conical shape is completely obscured.
Our plan – such as it is – is that tomorrow morning I will take the first bus to Station 5 and attempt the ascent, completely disregarding the 'proper' way of ascending at night to catch the sunrise or staying overnight at a high-altitude cabin to acclimatize to the altitude. This is mainly due to low funds (the cabins are expensive) and clothing only just suitable for a day ascent and certainly recipe for disaster if I should attempt to climb at night on Mt Fuji' notoriously frigid flanks.
So, either I'd summit and then make my way down or I'd just make my way down. Then I'd catch the last possible bus back to the hostel, shower and we'd jump on a night bus bound for Kyoto, our next stop. This plan was certainly the cheapest way of doing things but did call for me to make quite decent time up the mountain. The first bus to Station 5 was at 7.20am, it took an hour to get there, then I had eleven hours to go up AND down in time to catch the one-bus-an-hour back to the village, where I would have half an hour till the overnight bus left.
We met a group of three people who had just completed the night ascent and saw dawn rise over Japan and then made it down in time for lunch. They were happy with their achievement but were exhausted, crawling into bed immediately. They had taken eight hours to ascend and five to get down. Thirteen hours in all. I would have to do it in two hours less. Worryingly, they all looked young and fit. My knee began to throb.

Early next morning, slightly bleary eyed, after a restless night's sleep on top of some pretty substantial sleep deficit, I made my noisy exit out of the dorm room. Noisy because not only did I exhibit my usual early-morning clumsiness but I had acquired, at the urging of one of the climbers from the day before, a four-foot long pine staff, that was THE tourist souvenir from Japan. I must have knocked it against every possible metal object in the room before I left, inadvertently banging the door behind me and then slapping the staff against the door when I jumped at the noise.
Mt Fuji is divided into what are known as stations, which in reality are little shacks, bolted into the rock, where the weary adventurer can purchase hot soup and other supplies as well as pay to use the toilet facilities provided and get out of the usually hideous weather, although not for too long. Each of these stations, and other shacks that look like stations but don't have their official status, provide their own unique stamp that they will brand onto the staff, for a fee. These stamps are of course as individual as the shacks themselves and occasionally provide the height of the station, proving to all those that would meet the staff handler, how far the staff got up Mt Fuji. The shrine at the summit, like all good religions, has jumped at the chance to make some money, and has its own uniquely red stamp, that I subsequently find out costs half as much again as all the rest.
The bus, like always, is on time and I make my way up the mountain surrounded by a mix of, mainly Japanese, day walkers (not vampires – at least as far as I know), overnighters and commuters, oddly. We get to the first bus stop and disaster – school group. We're halted for twenty minutes as the bus driver gets into a tizz, as he needs to issue them all a particular coloured pass and he can't find it. He radios for help. Help never arrives. I think he prints the tickets themselves somehow because after a really long wait the absolutely necessary tickets are produced and distributed to each child. With the school group and some additional adults herded in there is no extra room for the multitude of other walkers and climbers who have been waiting patiently in the drizzle that is starting to fall. They have to wait for the next bus, now in twenty minutes time. They appear stoic about it.
We arrive, after enough switchbacks up the mountain side to make me feel vaguely nauseous, at station 5. By the time I've located the toilet (nothing is in English) and scoffed at the price of pine sticks here, I'm already running twenty-five minutes late, it is 8:45am. I have less than eleven hours.
I start at a quick pace. Again, completely disregarding the widely held belief that you should pace yourself from the beginning. I follow some people I recognise from the bus. Worryingly, I start going downhill. Again, there are no signs in English, so I am guessing that 'up' is this way. This seems wrong somehow.
After ten minutes I am descending an appreciable angle. Everyone familiar from the bus is way behind me. The fog and drizzle is constant. From up ahead, through the vaporous quagmire, groups of weary overnighters, at least they look like they have spent a night on the mountain, trudge, slowly, up to meet me. They look like refugees, mostly. Covered in mud and wet from the rain, few talk and they all walk with a heavy tread. This does not bode well and puts a doubt in my mind about my ability to climb this mountain in the time I have, with the equipment I have. And I am still walking quickly downhill. The doubt, the worry, that I am walking the wrong way and will have to retrace my steps up this hill, with even less time, nags at me. Finally, I can take it no longer and approach a European couple. I have to stand in front of them to make them stop as they seem deaf and blind to me.
“Excuse me, is this the way to the summit?”
He looks at me slightly confused, while she responds, wonderfully to me, in English.
“Yes, the summit is this way. Keep going down.”
“Thank you very much. Ummm,” I can't resist. “Was it good?”
She hesitates. She seems to look anew at her clothing and at her shell-shocked partner.
“It was good. It was....hard.”
I thank them again and walk on, following their counter-intuitive advice. It was hard, she'd said. The worry has now lodged itself firmly in my mind. I begin to trot down into the mist. Those I pass along the seem to look at me as if I'm mad.
A few minutes later, a wooden signpost points, in English, to the summit. I follow the path on the right, finally, going up. Soon I will be looking back at my time descending to the summit with a warm heart. The way up is never down again. Not even a little. I pass as many people as I can. A horse and rider, the horse's shoes clopping on the rough stone of the path, pass me. I try to keep them in sight for as long as I can. When they disappear into the murkiness I become aware that I have started sweating. Again, I will look back at this time with fondness later on.
Gradually, the gradient increases and the vegetation diminishes from trees and shrubs to small, ground-hugging plants. Soon, bare rocks take the place of soil and the vegetation disappears completely. The mist and rain which had shown signs of dissipating for a short while, have closed in again and the light, clinging rain has become a shower. My, now tatty, Vietnamese, bright-yellow, poncho comes out. I also unzip my trousers legs so that I am wearing shorts. It proves to be a good decision, albeit a breezy one. I now look conspicuously different to most other climbers, especially the majority that are Japanese, who have all manner of high-quality alpine gear and brightly-coloured mountain coats from respectable adventure-clothing brands.
An hour or so passes. I should have reached the sixth station by now and I am starting to worry actively that if I don't come across it soon I will have to seriously re-think what I can reasonably accomplish before I have to turn back in time to catch the bus back to the hostel. I pass a few mountain shelters but none are the sixth station. Obviously, no one speaks English.
Finally, I come to a shelter that has 'Stamp', written in scrawled English on a wooden sign outside. I am greeted, as always in Japan, with a smile. I give him my stick and he dries it over the fire. He explains, in very halting English, that it needs to be dry so that the stamp will scorch the wood effectively to show the details of the stamp. Two hot pokers with the stamps are in the hot coals of a fire by the door. There is a small space, about three inches wider than my feet, where I can stand inside the shelter, out of the rain. Further inside the shelter only a few people walk around in socks on the raised wooden floor. It's lovely and warm inside. It's only then that I realize that the temperature outside must have dropped appreciably since the beginning. The young Japanese boy, no more than a teenager, and I exchange smiles and small snippets of conversation, while the smell of warming pine fills the air. I gesture at the station and hold up six fingers.
“Sixth station? Station Six?”
He shakes his head, “Seven.” He says and holds up seven fingers. I ask for confirmation and he repeats. “Here. Station seven.” He points down the mountain into the completely impenetrable mist, in a way I take to mean a long way down. “Station Six, down.”
I have missed Station Six, somehow, in the mist and I am now, happily, much higher up the mountain than I had realised. I feel a great weight lifted. I am now, ahead of time and do not have to climb at such a punishing rate.
I point up the mountain. “Station Eight.”
He agrees that, indeed, Station Eight is after this seventh station.
“Close? Near?” I ask with all my new found confidence.
He smiles and makes a big, exaggerated, negative gesture with his hand while shaking his head. “No.” He points repeatedly up in the same manner that I had understood to mean that Station Six was far below. He smiles at me and shrugs his shoulders in a good-natured apology, as if he had placed Station Eight so inconveniently high.
He takes my stick out from above the flames and prepares to brand it. I ask him what the symbols mean. He can't find the words in English. He asks his friend who is behind a wooden screen but both smile and shake their heads. I tell them in gestures and words not to worry themselves. It will turn out that he is the most fluent English speaker on the mountain. I pay my 200yen, about $3, thank them, shake their hands, and head back out into the rain.
Between the seventh and eighth station the temperature drops further and becomes actually cold instead of just chilly. The gradient is now properly steep and the mist, which has obscured the view and the mountain itself is as thick as tissue paper. On reaching the eighth station a slightly unpleasant episode takes place. I've been trying to eat at regular intervals to keep my energy levels up, a trick that I learnt the hard way, on a two-day bike ride with a friend along Hadrian's Wall, a few years ago. I'm cold and feeling very tired for the first time. I know that as long as I can have some carbohydrates soon I will be able to complete the rest of the climb.
The shelter, for whatever reason, is busy and I have to wait in a line in the rain to get my stamp. I start to shiver. I need to change out of my wet gear and put on my warmest clothes as well as eat. I buy my stamp and make my way into the cramped hut where some Japanese are just sitting down to some hot soup. I am in the way as they try to go back and forth but there isn't much I can do, so I smile as best I can and try to look a little pathetic. I take out some food and have just started munching when I'm aware suddenly of some kind of signal taking place between the Japanese in the hut. A guy from the counter goes through all the Europeans in the hut, finding out if they've paid for anything. If they haven't, they are asked to leave. I had read, when I was doing my research on Mt Fuji, that the huts on the higher slopes did not appreciate people taking up room if they hadn't bought anything. Ten minutes seemed to be about the agreed time that one could shelter without being asked to leave. I found this view understandable and would not have stayed longer, although I had just paid 300yen for a stamp. In short, after sitting down for about two minutes and unpacking some of my rucksack, I was asked to leave as I hadn't bought any food there. Apparently the stamp didn't count. I managed to get a bit of food down as I was struggling to re-pack my soaking rucksack while the guy stood over me making fast chewing signs.
I knew that I needed to get out of the rain, at least for a few minutes, and properly rehydrate and re-fuel. I also hadn't been able to warm up and I knew I needed to get changed quickly. With great fortune, an overnight hut proved to be only a few minutes up the mountain. There, the atmosphere was completely different, I was greeted like a friend rather than an inconvenience. Even though the hut was larger, it was also busy and I saw that the process I would need to go through to get changed and eat in the hut would be long and tedious for all concerned. So, I found an area outside, at the end of the building, next to the spare propane cylinders, under the overhang of the roof. There, I was only bothering those that needed to get into the dormitory or out to have a cigarette. I stripped off my sodden layers and put on all my warm, dry clothes, including my woollen hat that I had bought in a Californian thrift shop in November, when we going up the mountains to see the Sequoias and been carrying ever since. I immediately felt better. I drank and ate looking at the swirling cloud, seemingly only a few metres away from me. As I left one of the Japanese there shouted good fortune. It washed my mouth clean of the bitter experience before.
It was around here that I first noticed the effect of the altitude on myself and others. Although I didn't suffer too badly at all till very close to the summit, from the eighth station I started to see people resting on the side of the trail, their heads bent low or leaning over their walking sticks, some slumped in mid-stride, breathing deeply. I had only encountered the effects of altitude once, when on the Jungfrau in Switzerland. I remembered the sensation of stopping and becoming aware that my heart was pumping furiously in my chest and that I was happy to stop every few steps to have a breather. I monitored myself carefully, ready to slow down or break if needed. I knew that to ignore symptoms was ignorant and could lead to problems later on. At the same time, I was careful not to over-think it, and attract altitude problems through hypochondria. For the first time I saw the small oxygen bottles being used by climbers, only moderately larger than Coke cans, and available at some of the huts. As I approached the ninth station and continued up these increased in profusion and climbers seemed to suck on them harder.
Between the ninth station and the summit there were several huts, although not stations. People congregated here. Some looked done-in, others not so bad but no one looked fresh. It was very quiet. This was the slowest part of the climb. Partly it was because of the log-jam of people, in a lot of places it was difficult to overtake safely, and in the other it was that there was noticeably less oxygen on which to draw. I was happy waiting for the way ahead to clear at times. Occasionally the beginnings of a headache would form, but luckily every time, it faded. Others, it was plain to see, were not so lucky. Most people were content to take things slow and ride out the bad times, while others appeared in some distress.
I thought that, with the best will in the world, should I have needed to, it would have been very difficult to carry someone down the mountain from here, should anyone have got injured. I was full of renewed admiration for all serious mountaineers. I thought of 'Touching the Void' and the desperate attempt by Simon to lower Joe down the mountain. I am not sure I could have done that. I thought I understood, only a tiny fraction, of the reasoning behind what some mountaineers have referred to as the necessity for a different moral code in the 'Death Zone' near the summit of Everest. Essentially, you are only responsible for yourself, because you physically are unable to help anyone else. Mt Fuji is 3,776m high, just over 12,000 feet. Everest is 8,848m or almost 30,000 feet. I know, depressingly, that I could not operate anywhere near that altitude and am full of respect for those that can.
The last 300 metres were the slowest and the hardest. A dozen steps seemed to be the right amount before a stop became a good idea again. I was breathing hard by the time the Inari gate, came into view. There is, of course, the summit, where the temple is and where you may buy your red stamp, and the true summit, which is where a Shinto shrine is, a few hundred metres further on. Of course, I had to get to the top. Unfortunately, like the entire climb, there was nothing to see. Visibility was only a few tens of metres. Looking over the rim either side was pointless.
I stayed at the top of Japan for a little while, I found an outcrop of rock all to myself and it was here that I re-fuelled, rehydrated and contemplated the climb. It was 1:20pm when I remembered to look at my phone. I had climbed Mt Fuji in four and a half hours. I knew I hadn't broken any records but I felt satisfied with what I had done in the context. With no prospect of beautiful vistas to photograph I started to make my way down.
The descent from the summit is tricky. The surface is made from small pieces of volcanic rock, which is uneven, slippery and unstable and I saw more than one person fall hard. Twenty minutes into the descent the sun broke through the cloud for the first time since the morning and I had a view of almost one half of one side of the mountain. Here, I took a few photos but I still couldn't call it a great view. The cloud closed in again within minutes.
The climb down, I have to be honest, was tedious. I tried to race down as fast as I could by controlled sliding, like I had done on descending Mt Doom on the Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand, but it wasn't as fast or as easy. In the end; zig zag stumbling seemed the most efficient way. I reached the fifth station with enough time to grab a coffee and find the toilet before the bus left. The descent had taken me three hours. In total I had gone up and gone down Mt Fuji in seven and a half hours. I felt quietly pleased with myself. It would have been nice to have climbed it in good weather and seen Fuji-san in all its magnificent glory. Alas, it was not to be. There is an alternative, attractive, longer route that starts much lower down the mountain, which is supposed to be the 'proper, proper' way of doing it, with very rewarding sections, ascending through alpine woods, but there simply wasn't the time when we were there.
At the hostel, who were very kind to us, I grabbed a hot shower and Del and I were able to chill out and drink lots of cups of tea, before getting on the overnight bus to Kyoto that evening. Climbing Mt Fuji on a budget. Job done.

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Photos

20 mins below the summit
On the way down, during a rare break in the cloud.

The volcanic rock
This rock was sharp and unstable.

Looking over the clouds
instead of through them.

Looking up at the gate
The Inari gate wa invisible from much further away.

Looking at the gate from summit
Note the thick, thick clouds.

Some greenery again
On the descent. The first green for several hours

The end.
This photo was taken by a very unhappy guy. He had been climbing with steel-toe capped boots. On the descent his toes came off second best.