Gotta love political correctness.

We also did an earthquake drill at work. This was particularly funny since we had to all wear shiny white hard-hats, and on the alarm bell, hide under our desks wearing these hats.

The group had somewhat fragmented now – Burak was stuck in a hut half way up, Yusuke & Asae needed to return quickly and so went down the way we came up. So it was Love, Gizem, Zoli, and myself. So we embarked downwards. Pleasantly after the insanely busy push and shove on the way up, the path was comparably quiet, and people were friendly, giving us the old “Konnichiwa” or “Ohayoo”.

The way down.

And as it turned out we had very different descent speeds. Love would take the lead, then me, Gizem, and finally Zoli who was dealing with knee problems. This was fine, since there’d be a hut every 20 mins or so, and we’d stop and regroup. Lulled into false security, at station 5 we continued on individually thinking we were almost back (on the way up, station 5 was the last stop before the bus station).

But three things happened. The weather turned almost instantaneously from sunny to driving rain and being so high we were engulfed in cloud. So at points it was a total white-out. The second thing was that my battery in my phone had died, so any hope of contacting the others had gone. Very sensibly, I was the only one with everyone’s numbers. The final thing that happened as I descended is that it dawned on me I’d been going about 5 miles, without seeing a soul, soaked to the skin, and out of food and water. I’d also entered a volcanic scree field, which in a way was quite fun as you could safely run down at quite some speed. The big problem however, was that the scree wasn’t satisfied just being a surface you run on, it really like to be run in, and do to that it engulfed my previously white running shoes, under my feet, in my socks, and between my toes. The shoes will never be the same.

Left, up, and down. Where did everyone go?!

Eventually the rain died down a little, the fog lifted, and I could see the bus station, and civilization! I’d now be going about 10 miles since the last person I’d seen so was glad to see people walking down in the distance. But what particular bemused me was the people running up the scree! It seems to be some kind of masochistic sport that people engage in – running up hill through the rain in unforgiving scree. I had judged the bus station to be about another kilometre or so, but my optimism was somewhat ill founded. However, I did eventually make it and collapsed on a picnic table at the bottom, having probably walked/run/jumped/staggered about 20 miles from the top. “Jamie” Love called to my joy – so at least two of us had made it down. But where were Gizem and Zoli?

We sat about an hour drinking water, mushroom tea (yes – you can make tea from mushroom – and it was actually quite nice) and eating noodles and an incredible rate. All of a sudden, “Jamie-san?” said the waitress. I was somewhat surprised, given I’d never met her before, nor told her my name. “Denwa” she said – which means telephone. So I went inside to hear a somewhat downhearted Gizem, who’d been rescued by a kind Japanese family. Turns out there was a much quicker route down – we had just needed to turn right – and she’d taken it and was safely on the way back. But Zoli. Where was he. We waited and waited and waited. Eventually we supposed he must have also taken the other route, but had no way of contacting us. So off we went, to shower and relax in Hakone.

Turns out Zoli hadn’t in fact taken the other route, but did eventually make his leisurely way down and back home. All’s well that ends well.

The baths come in all shapes, sizes, temperatures, and of course colours – not the bath, but the water itself. The crazy baths include: red wine (sadly doesn’t have the flavour, just the colour), green tea, coffee, curry (this one I was really glad it didn’t have the flavour), and sake.

But there were two particularly special baths that deserve mention. First was a “dead sea bath”, into which an entire country’s salt extracts had been poured, raising its density, and thereby making you float! It’s really cool floating on the top, the only problem comes when (not if – there’s no choice in this) you get some in your eyes, or if you’ve got scratches or cuts. OW. Big time OW.

The second amazing bath – a real “only in Japan” moment – was “Dr Fish”. In the style of a Turkish hammam, this was a foot-bath filled with tiny fish that come up and nibble your toes. I kid you not. This is not one for the ticklish, and would make even the local Yakuza bosses giggle like school girls. That’s if they were allowed in – “NO ENTRANCE to those who have a tattoo on their body” say the rules. I’m not quite sure of the health benefits of Dr Fish, but definitely an experience.

Mount Fuji from my own room!
Sadly the Pachinko parlour ruins the view somewhat.

Mount Fuji from top of the Mori tower in Roppongi Hills.

We got a group of us together to hike up to the summit. We decided that we were in no fit state to attempt an ascent from the base to the summit, so instead did a fairly standard route, taking a bus from Shinjuku to the ’5th station’ at about 2500m. So that’s almost 1300m elevation to gain. Oh, and by the way, we started hiking at 10pm. Yes, pm, the plan was to hike all night, no sleep, and reach the summit for sunrise.

Left to right: Zoli, Burak, Love, Gizem, Asae, me, and Yusuke.
Everyone (eventually) made it to the top, apart from Alex, who didn’t even make it to Shinjuku

It was really quite spooky to start with, walking up in the semi-darkness with only the full moon, the light of the glowing lava, and our head-torches. Actually there wasn’t any glowing lava but it felt like there should have been. Very Lord-of-the-Rings-esque.

Now, Mount Fuji is only officially open in July and August each year, since you need to be a proper mountaineer to climb it in the snow. It’s said that only 1% of Japanese people ever climb Mount Fuji. As we discovered however that’s a hella lot of people…

The hike up was fairly ok, not exactly easy, but no K2. We’d stop every so often to rest, eat and drink. Dotted up the slope are several ‘huts’ where you can opt to sleep for a few hours on a rather small piece of floor, next to lots of snoring people. As we got nearer the top, more and more people from these huts were waking up to try and reach the summit at the same time. It seemed that all 1% of 120 million people were attempting to climb Fuji that night. Progress ground to a halt, rather frustratingly as sunrise was rapidly approaching.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in this case these desperate measures were trying to walk up the sides of the trails past the desperately slow hikers.

Somehow I made it to the top, just in time for…. clouds. Yup, after all that no sunrise. But ne’ertheless it was pretty amazing up there. Eventually the clouds thinned a little and we got some amazing views.

The long queue to reach the top, just after dawn.

At the summit! Sadly we lost Burak along the way, due to his slightly inappropriate clothing!

The closest we got to sunrise. Pretty awesome.


Above the clouds.
(This makes it look much more difficult than it really was!)

Before I sign off, a special mention to Zoli for supplying the first maccy-d’s burger I’ve ever had at 3776m! Ok well, I’m gonna leave the descent to the next post, cos that’s another story…

These mean all you can drink and eat respectively.  And they’re such good value for large 外人 (gaijin – foreigners) such as myself, who can drink and eat my way through the whole restaurant

• A weekend away to Taipei, whereby Matt narrowly avoided being deported from Japan.  Met up with Angel’s extended family who were incredibly kind and generous, taking us everywhere – great restaurants, out clubbing all night, post clubbing lychee champagne, hot springs, the night market, Taipei 101 (currently the tallest building int the world!).  Fun weekend!
  

  Taipei

• Museum of parasitology.  Yup, a museum about worms.  Some are about 10m long, and they used to live inside people.  Yum.
• Tokyo dome roller coaster!  Followed by coffee in the “moomin cafe” with real life-size moomins!!!
• Traditional Izakaya – a Japanese pub type thing.  We had to great the ‘master’ when we went in: genki master?  He was a nice chappy so we bought him some beer.
• Donkey.  Matt’s idea of heaven.  Everything you could possibly buy, all under one roof.  Food, furniture, and furry sex toys.