Musings of a Drunken Monk: Individual Entry Archive

Yesterday I announced that I was going to climb 富士山 (Mount Fuji) with Roy. Could that have just been yesterday? Seems so long ago.

We left Tokyo Thursday (yesterday?) night and traveled to the 5th station (about halfway up) of Fuji. We arrived at about 10:00PM and got going by a little earlier than 10:30PM. You see, it is somewhat of a popular custom to hike during the night to reach the peak and watch the sunrise. So we hiked for the next three and a half hours (it would've been three, did I not have weak chickenlegs) up some pretty steep volcanic scree. I can't believe grannies and kids do that hike, let me tell you.

The good news is that we passed pretty much everyone on the mountain. It became this kind of self-feeding obsession to not allow anyone behind us to pass us once we'd passed them. There were, naturally, other reasons I won't belabor. The end result was we got to the summit at around 2AM which is way too early. See it's friggin cold up there and waiting for two hours in near-zero temperatures with a whipping wind does not equal fun. So we spent two hours, me curled fetally in the corner of a stone wall and Roy sharing a tiny smelly public bathroom space with 6 other people.

We survived and the pictures prove it.