Planting trees at 1440 meters

Last week was the environmental week at TP. As a final event, a tree planting operation on Fujisan was planned for Saturday. As you may have guessed, I like Fujisan. Doing something for the environment isn't that bad either, and some hard labour might do some good for this body. Adding to this that the weather forecast predicted a perfect bike riding weather, I wasn't late to sign up for the tree planting event. As the others were going by bus from Shinjuku, I saddled up on my R6. Buses are way to slow...

Two hours later I arrived at the tree planting center. After an introduction it was time to replant some middle sized plants that had grown out of their small plastic pots inte large sized plastic pots.A couple of hundred of those pots later, it was time to relocate to the actual planting area. Sadly, these guys in their new plastic pot homes, were supposed to wait for three years before being moved to their final home uphill. So, after a lunch at 1440 meters we started to plant trees that somebody three years earlier had prepared for us. Thanks guys! Some 200 plants later, the good deed was done. However, the survival rate for these guys is less than 60% (after the first year) and decreasing. The worst enemy seems to be raindeers starving for these new guests. I hope some of my guys will survive. Think I'll have to return next time in Japan to check them out.