In July we got to head home to the states for my little sister's wedding. It was an incredibly awesome, too quick, trip back home. I hadn't really thought much of taking any more trips once we were home (in Japan). But then I got the idea in my head that we really needed to try and get up to Mt. Fuji and climb it while we still could. This year could be our last chance. We're so close to Japan's tallest mountain! It's 12,388 feet! I've never climbed a mountain. We HAVE to do it. My kind husband went along with my plans, and the basic plan hinged on us finding another family who were able to take a week of leave and not have their kids miss the 2nd week of school. After putting the offer out to just about everyone here on the island we know who we thought might be candidates, we found takers a week beforehand. Yes! Our friends upstairs with a 3-yr old girl and a 1 yr. old boy. Now that just left getting up there. We'd made reservations for a couple hotels and base inns, and were just going to cancel the whole trip if we didn't make it up on a military plane early in the guys' week off.
We were thrilled when we all got selected for a flight first thing on Saturday morning. After one long stop, we arrived in Tokyo around 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon. I had our route all ready to go by train, so we hopped on and started moving. The distance of 55 miles took us 4 hours to cover on train with our excess luggage, 5 children, 1 large and 1 small stroller. By the time we got to Gotenba, it was 8 p.m. and the kids had only eaten Cheerios and pumpkin muffins all day. It was decided that we would climb first, on Sunday, and then our friends would climb on Monday. Lots of people do night climbs on Fuji and then spend the night most of the way up in mountain huts, allowing them to see the sunrise from the top. But with 2 nursing babies, we knew neither of the boys could make it through a night without us. So we opted for the all-day dawn-to-dusk hike. Hubby and I awoke at zero dark thirty, intent on making it up and down before the sun went down. We headed out the gate and found that there wasn't going to be a bus coming by for another hour and a half. Option 2 - taxi. Wouldn't be there for another 15 minutes, the guard said. 15 minutes later. .accent error. . . "Oh, you said 50 minutes?" Well, okay. And now the sun is starting to peak out, and we have a gorgeous view of the top of Mt. Fuji from the base of it, 2,000 feet. The taxi finally comes and takes us the 10 minutes into town to the real bus station. Oops, guess we didn't look at that bus schedule either in all our hurry the night before. No buses for another hour still. Well, hubby wanted to get going, so we gave all that we owned to another taxi driver, and he kindly drove us up to the Subashiri 5th station, where we could start climbing. There are 4 main climbing trails on Fuji. We picked one of the least-popular ones, because it was one of the closest to where we were staying. It has the steepest grade of all of them, and on our little cheat sheet it said we'd make it to the top in 4 hours and back down in an hour and a half. Nice! We'd be back well in time for dinner with the kids.
We were well-prepared to climb, and hubby said he'd carry everything so all I'd have to do was climb. What a guy. Now I feel kind of bad loading him up with all our junk and just carrying a stick, but he sure was a trooper. The first couple hours we were hiking below the tree line, through beautiful forests and greenery and shade. The weather was sunny and in the 60s, I'd say, with not much wind. I also noticed right away that the trail seemed a lot steeper than our sheet had said. Not having actually climbed a mountain before, I was expecting a much more gradual, packed earth-type trail. This most definitely was not. It was more like climbing a Stairmaster all the way to the top, stepping up on rock above rock. We didn't really need to grapple and grab onto rocks much until the end, but it was definitely a work-out. We kept track of our "4 hour" sprint to the top with a little map that gave us times to the next station. Every hour or so, there is a mountain building that sells drinks and soba and ramen, and they all contain a room or 2 of hard wooden bunk beds, like you'd sleep on at camp. People pay to sleep at the huts overnight or for a few hours, most of them trying to make it to the top for sunrise without doing all the climbing at night. A bottle of water at a mountain hut only costs 500 yen ($5). Our backpack got lighter as we drank our supply of water, and we ended up only having to buy a couple bottles, but it looked like lots of people were just buying and chugging as they went. The mountain huts are also where you can buy your brand for your Mt. Fuji hiking stick, which I proudly hiked with the whole time! By the time you reach the summit, you have a hiking stick with a whole line of brands on them from each station, proving you've done it. Pretty cool memento. That's probably the most sentimental I'll ever feel about a piece of wood.
We started to think we'd made a wrong turn at hour 4, as we were nowhere close to the top! Whoever wrote that little cheat sheet must have run the Mt. Fuji race or something. (There's a race to the summit every year, and we definitely passed were passed by some guys who looked like they'd done it a hundred times.)
Right about hour 7, we finally made it the summit! It was cold and we were hidden in a cloud, but we made it. We rested in the little eating place/shop on top for awhile and then started the climb down. At the top a Cup of Ramen was 900Y ($9.50). I almost tempted to buy it to say it was the most expensive cheap Ramen I'd ever eaten, but I vouched to eat my 15th granola bar of the day, instead. It takes about an hour and a half to walk around the crater at the top. We were planning on doing that, but since we couldn't see anything anyway and the day was turning late on us, we figured it would be kind of pointless.
We picked the right trail, because ours had a separate trail for the descent. We forgot to link up with it right at the top, though, which probably cost us some time. Even using the fast descent trail for half the time, it took us 4 hours to get down. Hubby would probably argue that it was worse coming down since he had on our huge pack, but I was having a jolly good time running/skipping/sliding/trying not to eat it. Every so often I'd look back and realize I'd left him in my dust (literally). The trail down was really soft dirt with very few rocks, that you just sunk into. It was almost impossible not to run. Sure, our shoes were full of dirt within 3 seconds and still are, but I thought it was a super clever way to get down fast(er). The fake-out came at the end when a sign on the trail said the end was in 200 meters, and then we get there and it's not the end. But there's a guy with a house there selling slightly cold Coke. So of course hubby has to drink a Coke. There's another sign that says the end is in another 40 minutes. :( With our timing, we ended up finishing up the climb in the dark. It was a good thing hubby was prepared with our headlamps, or we probably would've had to spend the night at that guy's house.
We made it back just in time to get the kids to bed. The kids did great playing with their friends and hanging out at the hotel all day, and we slept like (very sore) logs. I discovered new muscles from the climb. Always good to know I still have some muscles. It was an exhausting yet amazing day, and we're both glad that we can say WE DID IT! "Climb Mt. Fuji - Check!"
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| Somewhere along the ascent where it's still green, but getting a little more rugged. |
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| This was Station #6 - our first stop. How would you like living on the mountain for 2 months out of your year and sleeping and making soup for all the climbers? Interesting job. |
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| Stopping to take a break and enjoy the beautiful view. |
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| The peak is already partly hidden in this picture, but you can see where the green stops and the barrenness begins. |
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| And now it's almost completely rock. A cloud rolled over the summit and down towards us pretty much all day, concealing the top from us, but it was really eerie to watch it, like a smoke monster. :) |
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| A mountain hut airing out their blankets for the next night. |
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| View from probably 2,500 feet from the top. |
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| I forgot to mention you had to pay to use the non-flushing toilets. I think I paid 5 times. |
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| One of a few orange dragonflies we saw, dead, attached to a rock. Those were the first orange dragonflies I've ever seen. Beautiful, yeah? |
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| Totally enveloped in the cloud, getting really close to the top. |
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| Right at the summit, where the Torii gate stands, people had stuffed coins into the gate beams. I haven't thoroughly researched it, but Mt. Fuji is a sacred mountain to Shintos and Buddhists (of which almost all Japanese are) so I can only speculate that it is part of their religious worship when they get to the top. There is a temple on top, too. |
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| We made it to the summit!! |
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| Look! It's the crater of the volcano! What do you mean you can't see it? |
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| The picture doesn't do it justice, but it was an amazing view coming down, when we finally made it out of the cloud. |
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| On the way down, slowly leaving the cloud at the top |
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| The trail coming down - way different than the one up. |
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| "What's taking you so long, honey? It's like you're carrying an extra 40 pounds and I'm not!" |
On Monday, we were more than content to stay at the Inn and watch the 5 kids while our friends took their turn tackling the mountain. We are glad they were able to make it all the way to the top, too, because it rained on them half the day and they said the winds were really fierce towards the top. They have a 1 year old boy, too, and the funniest part was feeding him and Ito Cheerios at the same table together. I'd put some out for the them to grab and their boy would delicately pick up one and chew it around in his mouth for a bit, while Ito would grab all that were left and madly stuff his face with them, before reaching over to grab any that were left. No wonder our baby's a heffer.
Tuesday was our last day staying at the base in Gotenba. We decided to head out to the popular Fuji-Q Highland Amusement Park, an hour and a half bus ride away. The park has 4 huge coasters, 2 are world-record holders officially and the one we rode was just the craziest coaster ever. More on that in a minute. The part of the day that made us smile the most though, were the encouraging? inspirational? pithy? sayings that we found in the bathrooms in the food court area. After seeing my door, I couldn't leave without going into every other stall and taking a picture of the back of each door. I think they speak for themselves. Love, love, love LOVE it.
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| The whole thing said, "You are cute and pretty girl." Why, thank you! |
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| This was on the wall walking into the bathroom. "Um, yes I'm ready!" |
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| Trying to move people along in case there's a line. :) |
I'm sure some funny guy designing the bathrooms thought these would be hilarious, and I'd like to thank him for making me smile from ear to ear.
The kids did a pretty spectacular job travelling, for the most part. I am always reminding myself that their tantrums and fits match their age the same way adults' grumpiness matches our age. So I could safely say that we had equal amounts of grumpiness while travelling. :)
The part of the park the kids most enjoyed was Thomas Land! I had thought it looked like a great re-creation on their web site, and I was right. I don't know how they got the license to recreate all of it, but it all was authentic and the girls liked it (even though the girls have no idea what any of the trains' names are).
I couldn't resist taking a picture of our fancy fast food meal. You ordered off a big menu, and we noticed a 7,000Y bowl of noodles. We couldn't figure out what was so special about it, but someone actually ordered it in front of us. Hope their $70 bowl of soup was worth it! There's no styrofoam here! This was fancy cafeteria dining, ceramic plates down to glass water glasses. Not quite the same as American amusement park food.
Here we are after emerging triumphantly from the craziest roller coaster in the world - Eejanaika! There are only 2 of these 4-dimensional coasters in the world, but this one's longer, faster, and has more inversions than the other one. It's basically just flipping and spinning you in all different directions as you go down the track, so you really never know what's coming next. The kids loved it, too! Just kidding - we kid swapped at the front of the line - another brilliant move of travelling with another family. I was the most hesitant to go out of us 4 adults. I'm not deathly afraid, but they're not necessarily my most favorite thing in the world, either. It was another fun day of travelling.
We basically had one day to explore Tokyo on this trip. Since we'd already seen some things with my parents in March, I wrote down a few spots I wanted to get to. We spent most of our day at the Edo-Tokyo Museum, probably the most comprehensive and coolest historical museum in the city that deals with the city's foundings and life over the past few hundred years. There were a lot of hands-on exhibits which you normally don't see in museums like this, and that kept the girls excited for most of it. They went back and forth between a rickshaw and a telephone booth for about 20 minutes, developing whole story lines on the phone and then pretending to pull each other. I don't know if everyone's kids are this imaginative, but I love that A. especially still knows how to pretend and imagine things.
The museum is conveniently located right next door to the Sumo Stadium, and I really wanted to walk around the area and try to spot a sumo wrestler. :) Most of them train around that area in what are called sumo stables, and the tournament that only happens twice a year in Tokyo was coming up a couple weeks after our trip, so I thought our odds were good. So when Daddy started saying, "Look! Look! Look behind you!" I turned with just enough time to see one riding his bike out to lunch. Nice. And we even saw another one on his bike off to get lunch too. We had studied about sumo wrestling before the trip in our first week of homeschool, so the girls were excited to be there and eat some sumo food, too - delicious soup.
We didn't have time for much else that day, so we ended up in a ritzy part of town and walked around a mall for awhile, which was fun. I enjoyed watching all the commuters hustle home from work on the trains. They obviously have a good handle on their train schedules, so to see a train coming and then see all the people speed-walking/jogging to make it was fun (for me, anyway, who was not rushing to get home from work). I also liked being completely crammed into cars with so many people, but the loudest person/the only one making noise always seemed to be Ito.
I can't believe we've been in Japan for 2 1/2 years already. Our future few years are always up in the air (as all of yours are too), but I feel like we'll be saying good-bye to Japan before I'm ready to leave. I'm really thankful everything worked out for this trip since it may have been our last off the island.
