Wow, what a trip! Hans almost died, and I, at one time, had charlie-horses in both of my quads, and Tetuya had a headache.
Fujisan, while beautiful from afar, will give you a good mixture of dizziness and sores that makes the experience of climbing it unforgettable.
I think Saturday (this trip) would make it on a list of 10-Most Tired Days in My Life.
I think I saw the trip guide Tetuya gave me, and it said that the route that we took would take 4 hours to reach the summit. What a lie! We took 7, and we were definitely one of the faster groups on the route. We met a group of girls an hour before we reached the top. We rested on the top for an hour and half, and 1 hour into our trip down, we saw them still busily making their way up. One of them looked like she was working in one of those gulag concentration camps in Stalinist Russia. I was going to ask them, "Doo site?", which means "Why" in Japanese, because they look like they were trying to torture themselves.
The trip started great, if I recall correctly. I don't want the dim memories of the latter part to affect my ability to recount objectively, so I will say that I enjoyed the first half hour. It was a beautiful weekend morning, with crisp air and friends. Because we were bitched by the security dude who told us that we had to park almost 3 miles from the 5th station, which is the start of our trip, we had to walk the first hour on concrete road. The route is divided into stations. 5 is the start, and 10 is the summit. For the moment, I thought that it was lame, who climbs a mountain on concrete? But on our way back, God did I love that concrete.
We made our way up to the 7th station rather quickly. With intuition, Hans and I concluded then that it wouldn't be so bad to get to the top. We were joking and laughing about how fit we were and that we would definitely get there quicker than what others told us. 7 hours? We probably get there in 4, like the guide said. Yeah, those idiotic thoughts evaporated rather quickly one hour later. Turns out, the 7th station was the "new" 7th, the real "7th" was an hour higher, and that was only 2/5 of hour trip. After 7th, I felt tired and little sick. After 8th, I had a cramp in my left quad, the weaker one. After 9th, I had cramps in both quads and a mild headache. When I got to the top, I slept for most part. I only took about 10 minutes to take pictures of the crater. I didn't even bother to visit the Shinto Temple that Tetuya was telling me about.
After the real 7th, my entire memory is a blur of frustration, soreness, and dizziness. I never thought about quitting, but "why" was as much of a question to me as to those girls. It was a Saturday. Most people in the academy are probably just getting up and starting to think about the night activities, while I am here laboring myself beyond exhaustion. It is true, when we were coming down, I was tired to the point that I didn't feel tired. My mind was blank, and I walked where there was road. I didn't think, I did. I truly felt "zen" for a moment.
I also had water and food problems. I brought 5000 yen. I felt that souvenir from Mt. Fuji would not be necessary since it's a mountain. Pictures would be enough. In the end, my only souvenir, and in my opinion, probably the most sentimental souvenir that I have would be the stick that I bought on 7th to facilitate climbing. It represents all the energy that I expended in propelling myself upward. After spending 1100 on the stick, I had only 2,000 left. I spent all of that buying water, because 1 bottle costed 500. It was truly a monopoly up there. Consumer demand was vertically inelastic, it was either life or money. And the store owners knew that, they could price water at 1,000, and I still would have bought it. Restroom also cost money. I thought that it was a so much BS, so I only put in 1,00 yen in the machine, when a woman came out, so I went in without paying the other 1,00 like I was supposed to do. I thought that I was righteous, I was defending humanity from corporate greed. What is this? People asking money for using the John. Pure nonsense.
We got to the summit around 3:30 PM. I fell down and slept on jagged rocks for about 50 minutes. I had a mild headache due to the altitude, about 4000 meters, and was tired beyond comprehension. I got up 10 minutes before going down to take pictures and sightsee the crater. Honestly, I thought the top was disappointing. There was a crater with no lava and a decrepit shrine that proclaimed "top of Japan." I thought that I deserved more for climbing 7 hours on slipper surface and inappropriate shoes. I was slipping here and there, and it was fortunate that I did not break my butt when I was coming down. Hans almost did though, several times. He didn't believe that walking sideways was helpful, so he toyed with his ass bone for 2 hours.
This would probably mark the most memorable day of my stay in Japan. We, as human, definitely remember best the days of hardship. I think the memories of nights in Roppongi or Kabukicho would be dimmed in relationship to the memory of Fujisan, especially because this is the 2nd to last weekend. In retrospect, I am fond of this memory, just as I am fond of the days before finals in the first semester this year. I did something special, and truly put myself through to the end. I am going to be proud of these pictures that I took on the mountain when I go back home. It speaks for a remarkable accomplishment.
