Mt. Fuji is best climbed with good friends

Aaaaaahh! Finally I can brush my teeth... after 40 hours...It has never felt this good!

Friday evening, after realizing that one actually might need some equipment to climb the holy mountain, I went to Shinjuku after work with Miwa and Aoi to do some serious mountain climbing equipment shopping. A couple of hours later I was a couple of "mans" (the bill with 4 zeros on it) poorer but was a good pair of shoes (on sale), mountain climbing sox, a hat with a mammoth picture on it, an oxygen spray, some more (I got some from Kaji-san at the office) oxygen pills and two CDs from Tower Record for the drive richer.

At 2.30 am the same night, after packing, repacking, unpacking and repacking, I realized that I knew nothing about what to actually bring 3776 meter up in the air. Is it cold? Is it going to rain? Do I need a windbraker, a gore tex *and* a fleece or should I go with my shorts and T-shirt only? How many snickers should I bring? Calorie mates? Water or Aquarius, Ritz or Oreo?

The result:
My Tetra Pak ski wear (Jacket, windbreaker part) from the conference/ski trip in Harbin, China, last January.
A hat with a mammoth pic
A sweater
A down west
Two T-shirts
A pair of shorts
Pants
Mountain climbing sox
Extra sox
Underwear
Shoes
A rain coat (borrowed from Aoi's brother)

Sunglasses
Camera
A head lamp (Borrowed from Kaji-san)

Water
Oxygen filled water
Oxygen spray
Oxygen pills
(I've heard that oxygen is important on high altitude)

Calorie mates (With cheese taste I later found out and couldn't eat)
Oreo bits *and* Ritz
4 Snickers

Band-aid
Compeed
Tape
Headache pills
Wet tissues

and a bunch of other useful things.

6.30 am, Saturday morning, up and take a shower. 7.30 am, meeting Miwa at the Yotuya station. 8.00 am, entering Mazda Car Rental in Takadanobaba to pick up a... Nissan...

8.30 am, picking up Petter, Aki, Aoi and Naoto at Shinjuku station.

1 pm, a little more than 2 hours delayed due to traffic jam on the Toumei highway, picking up Robert and Aya in Numadu. All 8 members gathered!

Around 3.30 pm, buying the most important tool, a walking stick, at the entrance to the mountain, and then we passed our point of no return.
Starting out at the Subashiri 5th station at 1980m on the eastern side of the mountain, I soon realized that Mt. Fuji is very beautiful... If you watch it from more than a couple of km away. When on it, except of the first couple of hundred meters through a forest, all you see is black sand, rocks and lots of lots of Japanese climbers.

But as I was told, If you climb Mt. Fuji the most important thing (in good competition with oxygen pills and a walking stick) is to do it with some good friends and have fun with them. These are my friends (Well, I'm in some of those shots to), and I really had fun with them!













For the next 5 hours or so, we climbed to station number 8, at around 3400m, where we had some curry with rice, and a rest on a loft. I was lucky enough to sleep around 40 minuter during the 4-5 hours of rest we had. The other guys didn't sleep that well either.








And obviously, along the struggle for the top, it was necessary to keep the oxygen level up!
Which *someone* was willing to do somewhat more often than the others!
At 2 am we headed out again. By that time, the altitude sickness had gotten a hold on me. For every meter, I felt more and more sick and the headache got worse. Having to stand in line, making the last 350 meters an almost 4 hour long ascend together with a couple of thousands of other climbers, didn't make it better. With a blurred visionand black spots dead ahead growing bigger for each step, there was nothing else than to push on forward. "Mosa på och var operativ!".

We got to the summit just a couple of minutes before daybreak. People were lined up to see the sun come up.Taking over an hour for the sun to show it's face, I must be honest to say that it didn't differ much from the ones I've seen from for example airplanes. With that said, I don't mean that it wasn't beautiful, but I'd rather climb Mt. Fuji to climb Mt. Fuji than climb Mt. Fuji to see the sunrise, so after taking a couple of photos Robert, Miwa and I rested for a while instead. At around 8am it was time to stroll around the top for a while, taking some photos and thinking about heading downwards again.

And don't be too surprised now... but in a country with 2.77 million vending machines, of course they have a bunch of those on the peak of the holy mountain too...(Which I sadly don't have any pics of)

Well, the climb down was rather some jogging and sliding the whole way. In just a couple of hours we were down again. Within a minute from getting into the car, Me and Naoto in the front were accompanied by six guys in the back seat, sleeping like babies. We chased them out for some food and onzen in Gotemba, then taking Aya to the Gotemba station and Robert to Numazu station. Finally, we prepared ourselves for the traffic jam filled trip back to Tokyo. With a whole 5 minutes left before the rent-a-car shop closed we returned the Nissan after another 5-6 hours on the road (150 km... Should take less than 2 hours).

After a short rest at Starbucks in Takadanobaba, the others took the train home. Miwa and I took a taxi to Yotuya with the result that I almost poked the driver's and Miwa's eyes out with the walking stick.

So, the next time you look up at that mountain, keep in mind that hundreds of thousands are strolling around on the top every year. 3776 meters above sea level.