The Grand Fuji-san Expedition

Louise here,

This a rather belated and rather long blog of a very important event I took part in straight after the Wado-Kai Nationals (drum roll please): the international assault of Fuji-san. Our team consisted of Carl (holding the banner for England), Chris Heinmiller, our Canadian friend, and myself (from the land of the long white cloud). For better or worse, we decided to climb through the night in order to catch the sunrise from the top. We caught a bus from Shinjuku station, arriving at Fuji-san's Kawaguchi-ko-guchi Hachi-gome (Eighth Station). After mucking around for a bit, doing important things like buying walking sticks and taking photos, we set off into the unknown at 9 p.m.

The Culprits at Base Camp (L-R: Carl, Louise, Chris)

As it was dark by then, we were relying on our trusty head torches for guidance. It wasn't too difficult however, as we could've driven a car down the track, it was so wide. Nonetheless, my fellow team-mates began to cast aspersions on my route-finding skills, as the track went down the mountain for a little way. They shouldn't have worried: the path soon began climbing, and didn't stop climbing until the top.

Chris and one smart salesperson

We had fun at every hut we passed, persuading Chris to spend money on getting his walking stick branded (each hut had a different brand to prove that you'd reached it). Sometimes we were helped in our persuasion by a hut attendant.

Does this mean they sell hot water along with something else unspecified?

After midnight, we began to be joined on the trail by all the people who'd stayed in the huts spread up the mountain. We spent a lot of time trying to get in front of groups who were moving slower than the pace we wanted to go. By about two or three in the morning, the trail was one mass of people, with a slow queue on the inside, a slightly faster queue in the middle and the people like us who were overtaking on the outside. I must say it was one of the most surreal experiences I've had climbing a mountain, doing it at the same time as the population of a small town. Looking back down the trail, there was just one long line of lights zig-zagging up the slope, broken up by the bigger lights of the huts.

We arrived at the top at 4 a.m., and sat for an hour watching the dawn develop and the sun rise. It was quite cold by that time.

The sun appears

Superman strikes again

I think that we probably climbed too fast, and with the high altitude and lack of sleep, I wasn't feeling too well at the top. We had intended to walk most of the way around the crater rim to the track we were going to take down, but we decided it'd be best to lose some altitude as soon as possible. So we took the short way round, and after getting diverted a little by rocks and taking photos, we started down the Gotemba-guchi track.

Cool rocks + Carl

Over the edge

Now, why weren't we going back down the track we came up, along with the rest of Japan, and why had we chosen the longest track down? Well, the attraction of the Gotemba-guchi track was the sunabashiri, a giant sand slide that stretches maybe five kilometres down the lower slopes of the volcano. Besides falling, this is the fastest way down the mountain.

After taking two hours to cover one and a half kilometres, stumbling over loose rocks, I was beginning to worry that it would take all day to get to the bottom. But then …. we reached the sunabashiri.

Scree walkers' heaven

Imagine gliding smoothly down over an ankle-deep bed of small stones, the cool wind in your face and dust in your eyes, a barren landscape stretching on either side, and in front of you the track disappearing over the edge and into the clouds. Then imagine getting to the bottom and being covered in dust (yes, literally), with sore knees and stones in your shoes (if you didn't wear gaiters). That was the sunabashiri. We covered five kilometres in one and a half hours. Grand total: seven hours up, three hours at the top, three and a half hours down, zero hours sleep. Woo!

Climbing Fuji-san was certainly an experience of a lifetime. We probably did it the hard way, climbing when normal people are asleep, and I don't think I'd do it that way again. However, we saw the sun rise from the top of the tallest mountain in Japan, and had a lot of fun on the way.

Jimba-san

Louise here,

On Saturday I went mountain climbing with one of my adult English students, Setsuko Kimura, and two of her friends, Mr Tachikawa and Mr Taniyama. We climbed Jimba-san, an 857 m high mountain that is 40 minutes by bus from Takao station on the Keio Line.

At the bottom (L-R: Setsuko, moi, Mr Tachikawa, Mr Taniyama)

We climbed through a plantation cedar forest for two hours, trading Japanese and English sayings, like “I'm sweating a lot” and “It's slippery.”

On the way up

At the top we found an interesting statue of a horse (representing Jimba-san the mountain), a cafe selling noodles and ice desserts, many picnic tables, many people dressed in expensive hiking gear and an elusive view of Mt Fuji.

At the top

It's still civilisation if there's somewhere to buy dessert

We took a shorter way down and spent the time composing haiku and trading names for the wildlife we saw and heard, like 'higurashi cicada,' 'killer whale' (we didn't see that one) and 'SNAKE!'

On the way down (before the snake)

Tsukuba San

Carl here for a report on our recent Mountain climbing exploits... Tsukuba-San.

At 877m (2877 ft), Tsukuba isn't a particularly huge mountain though even on most cloudy days it can be clearly seen from Sugito. We're hoping to climb Fuji-san later in the year so it seemed to make sense to climb a few 'baby' mountains first, to get a feel for the difference in climate.

The journey
We left Wado station at 10 o'clock and had a bit of false start trying to get to the mountain because I managed to mis-read the Kanji on my phone 'train finder' and decided to take us to Kita-Senju station - maybe 90 mins from Sugito instead of Kasukabe station - maybe 15 mins from Sugito! Though I'm sure it's a mistake anyone could have made... maybe! What can I say, Japanese is difficult enough without trying to muddle your way through 6000 different Kanji!!!

Anyway, back to the story...

According to my guide book, there was no direct train to Tsukuba-town because the locals decided to shut down the train station that used to service the area. So, we had to get the train to a nearby town instead, and then take a 40 minute bus ride to Tsukuba.

BAD Bus Drivers
Once at Tsukuba, we wondered around looking lost until we found which bus we needed and then headed towards it. I think the bus driver was feeling 'mean', or maybe he just didn't want to try dealing with foreigners because he saw us walking towards his bus and decided to close the bus doors and leave early!

This gave us a 30 minute wait in the baking sun for the next bus to take us to the start of the hike. The bus was full of Japanese people, and I had the unfortunate pleasure of a little boy being sat behind me. Every 30 seconds he decided to kick the back of my chair which (along with the heat) made the journey a little unpleasant.

New Friends
But, I decided to make friends with him and gave him and his grandmother a sweat (Mitsuya Cider - if you were wondering), then to my surprise this little boy starts talking to me in VERY GOOD English. His name was Rikuto, and he was 4 years old. He asked me my name, Amy's name and how old we were!.



My guidebook told me that this bus ride should only take 10 minutes, but we arrived at the start point an hour later. By this time it was close to 1pm!



We walked uphill for a few minutes and arrived at the Shinto Shrine at the foot of the mountain.


Folk Tale... in traditional costume...

We skipped the folk tale by the 'Samurai' because we didn't understand a word of it, but the Shrine itself was worth a look around.




The lazy way to travel...!

(If you're feeling lazy, you can take a short train ride up to the top of the mountain from here.)

We started the walk up the Miyukigahara course (御幸ヶ原コース).


Let the hiking begin!

The walk up was pretty straight forward, it was a relatively well maintained, though well worn route. With lots of people going up and down with us. Everyone was very friendly with a firm 'Konnichiwa!' from everyone you met, though some were particularly interested in us, the usual questions followed - who are you? where are you from? how long are you staying in Japan etc...


Not wanting to mess up again, I wisely checked the map!

One surprise was a guy in a full, bright Orange 'Son-Goku' Dragonball costume. He was thrilled that we were also Dragonball fans and we immediately recognised the costume! Though I'm sorry to say that I didn't get a photo.


The view from the top!

We got to the top within 90 minutes and we were greeted with tons of shops, and even a rotating restaurant of all things! There were a lot of people around, all queuing for ice creams. Though most had clearly taken the train up the mountain!

From here, it was a short walk up to the first peak. Mt Nantai @ 771m...





Then it was a 10 minute walk past the souvenir shops to the second (and highest peak). Mt Nyotai @ 877m...

On the way you pass this:



A 'toad' shaped rock formation. Legend says that if you can lodge a stone in the toads mouth (like the child is trying to do) then you'll receive good fortune. I tried and missed the toad completely!

The view on this side of the mountain was much nicer, though much busier!



We opted to double back on ourselves rather than take the circular route because we weren't sure of the bus schedule. As it turned out, we luckily caught the last bus back to Tsukuba centre.

GREAT Bus Drivers
Which is were we hit a problem... we didn't have any coins to pay the bus fair, the smallest note we had was 5000 yen and the driver couldn't split it. The driver was really patient and a genuinely nice guy, despite our lack of language skills. I tried to get change in the bus station, but the office was already closed, so he offered to let us ride for free, which I refused. I ended up running to a department store across the street to get some change. We thanked the driver and headed to the 'Tsukuba Express' subway station for the journey home.

Apparently my hiking guidebook was printed before 2005 when this subway was built. It's a private line so it's a little expensive, but it cut 90 minutes off our journey home so it was worth it! Oh and yes, we could have taken this train on the morning too!!! D'oh!