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Climbing Mt. Fuji

by Andrew Vestal

For nearly the entire year I've been in Japan, I've been shooting my mouth off to anyone who would listen about how I wanted to climb Mt. Fuji. Heck, it's part of my standard self-introduction, the part near the end wherein I list "things I want to do in Japan that would be exciting to a foreigner and can be expressed in English simple enough for high school students to understand." That means I've told over 1600 students in the Kiryu area that "I want to climb Mt. Fuji," as well as any number of teachers and co-workers, in English or otherwise, who wandered close enough to me. So when Kiritaka's biology teacher, Miyazaki-sensei, approached me this May, asking if I was interested in climbing Mt. Fuji with him this July ... well, I couldn't really say "No." I couldn't really say, "Let me think about it." I'd spent the better part of the last year proclaiming my intent to climb Mt. Fuji all over town and in two separate languages. Ambiguously feigning disinterest was not a possibility. All I could say was, "Yes." I was going to climb Mt. Fuji or die trying.

For the month before the climb, I embarked on a strict training regimen of thinking about exercising each and every day--without fail. I considered reading up on the climb: how difficult was it? How many people climbed each year? How many people died each year? In the end, however, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and resolutely learnt as little as possible. My role model in this quest was Milo, protagonist of Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. In this children's tale, Milo has many dangerously exciting adventures in his quest to rescue to twin princesses Rhyme and Reason. When he finally rescues the princesses, the pair reveal a secret about his quest: it had been impossible. There was absolutely no way he could have done it. But since Milo hadn't KNOWN it was impossible, he was nevertheless able to succeed. This has always seemed like sound reasoning to me; in this case, I figured, as long as I didn't know how difficult the climb was, I would be able to complete it just fine.

So after about six weeks of studiously avoiding information about Mt. Fuji, the big weekend came. It started on Friday when I left Kiritaka and went straight to Miyazaki-sensei's house. A few words about Miyazaki-sensei: he's a biology teacher (third year) and quite old; he's retiring from teaching, per mandatory retirement age, this March. He's also quite smart, quite funny, quite kind, in embarassingly better shape than I, and--at parties--drinks rather a lot of alcohol. You know how every high school has one teacher that's cool, that all the students love, even though he's a TEACHER, he's still a cool and all around together guy. Well, at Kiritaka, that teacher is Miyazaki-sensei. So the night before our scheduled ascent, I went to eat dinner with him and his wife. Regarding dinner: as a foreigner, when I have difficulty communicating, I fall back on smiling a lot and graciously accepting the hospitality of others. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, except that Japanese hosts are culturally hard-wired into an inexhaustible reservoir of kindness. Kindness and food. Dinner, then, consisted of me making small talk in Japanese the best I could, nodding, smiling, amicably agreeing, and the hosts smiling, proffering dishes, and reaching into their spacious four-dimensional refrigerator to pull out yet another course. I don't know where the food comes from, it's kind of farcial. If there's a way to communicate that you're full--and have your host actually believe you--then I have yet to learn it.

I was expecting to turn in early and get a good night's sleep; we were, after all, waking up at four thirty the next morning, not to mention the whole mountain-scaling thing. But in what would become one of the weekend's recurring motifs, a decent amount of rest was sacrificed at the altar of sociability. By way of comparison: when American college students stay up all night studying, the next day, they just can't tell their friends enough how unbelievably tired they are, and what an amazing sacrifice they just made to see this project through to completion. A Japanese person, in contrast, simply wakes up, drives to Tokyo, climbs up and down a 12,000 foot mountain, then drives back home, all on four hours sleep, without ever saying a word. Even yawning would be giving your physical state more credence than it deserves. It's uncanny. It's not simply that everyone was so awake and alert throughout the weekend; it was that no one treated this as anything unusual. As if climbing mountains in the middle of the night on four hours of sleep was just the one entertainment option they happened to choose out of the many they were considering for that weekend. I felt guilty just for thinking about being tired.

In any case, Saturday morning, I woke up early, showered, ate breakfast, repacked my bags, then drove with Miyazaki all of to the parking lot where we were meeting with the rest of the climbing party, all of 100 meters away. I suppose that when you plan the excursion yourself, you can ensure things are convenient. I knew that the group of climbers was mostly former coworkers and friends of Miyazaki-sensei. (No other teachers from Kiritaka came, though the husband of a teacher currently absent on maternity leave did.) Taking Miyazaki-sensei's age into account, I had spent the last several days in a vague, uninformed fear of my slow, lumbering gait forcing me to be abandoned midclimb by an uberfit pack of middle-aged adults. I was not disappointed: in our group of nineteen, fifteen were adults over forty, and the sixteenth was thirty-five. Like most Japanese people, all were in distressingly good shape. I was number seventeen. The last two members of our group were Masayuki and Keiko, aged ten and eleven. My previous visions of being shown up by my elders were now quickly replaced by a number of nightmare scenarios involving elementary students scampering gleefully about me. A momentary lapse into reason, however, told me that if a fourth-grader can be expected to make the climb, maybe an out-of-shape foreigner could hack it, too.

The nineteen of us piled into three large vans/SUVs and set off for Mt. Fuji via Japan's expressway system. I was not previously aware of Japan's expressway system, and for good reason: it takes longer to reach Tokyo than by train and will run you about 10,000y a car. So unless you have five - or more - people, you'd never even think about it. Still, if you have a big group of people and are going somewhere the trains don't - like halfway up a mountain -- the expressways are fast, well-maintained, and unshockingly vacant. It felt like we had driven into a 1950s driving instructional video; the ancient, technicolor kind they make you watch in Driver's Ed where they carefully demonstrate how you should leave at least one car length per ten miles an hour you're traveling, then cut away to show the vehicle in question puttering smoothly along a completely empty expanse of highway, save for a single other car off in the yonder distance. Eerie.

Just before we arrived at the mountain, we stopped at a grocery store and picked up food for the trip. You carried what you wanted to eat. This being my first time to do any sort of mountain climbing, I wasn't sure at all what to buy, and sort of trailed around the rest of the group and imitated whatever they were putting into their baskets.

So what did I bring with me up the mountain? Here's the complete list:

My backpack - for carrying everything, of course
A rain jacket - bought for 480y from my local 7-11, guaranteed to work the first time, but can never be refolded into the plastic bag it came in
An umbrella - folds down small for convenience; unfolds small for humor value
A light short-sleeved shirt - to go over my t-shirt
A heavy long-sleeved shirt - to go over my t-shirt and my light-short sleeved shirt
One pair of socks, two pair of underwear - to theoretically change during travel
A blue cap - I normally don't wear caps, but I was told to bring one. Really good advice. Keeps both sun and rain out of your eyes.
Gloves - their purpose is two-fold. First, it is cold, and your hands will be too unless you have gloves. Second, you will be falling a lot, grabbing onto rocks, etc, and it's a good idea not to do so bare-handed, unless you like scrapy rock bits all up in your stuff.
Knife, fork, spoon, and four pairs of disposable chopsticks - for eating
1 liter thermos, orange - Keeps water cool and easy to drink, what a useful idea when you climbing a GODDAMNED MOUNTAIN.
Sunscreen - I didn't use this but I figured I might as well bring it to keep my Mom happy
Sunglasses - It said to bring these, so I did. In retrospect, since most of our climbing was done between midnight and 5:00 AM, these would only be useful in the event of an anti-eclipse that floods the nighttime mountainside with brilliant daylight. Far more practical was...
A headlamp - Because your hands will be busy breaking your falls.
Maps of our trail on Fuji and contact information for people in the party - Because no one wants to star in the next episode of "Lost ... and Never Found."
Toilet paper - Not all of the mountain huts come equipped with toilet paper, and it's really best to go prepared. Plus, the poor man's napkin.
A washcloth - I dunno, I guess I figured I might need a washcloth or something. It all looks different when it's being packed in a Kiryu apartment.
Toothbrush and toothpaste - awfully presumptive of me, assuming there'd be running water.
My Wordtank - In case I really, really needed to look up some absolutely critical Japanese word. Like "appendicitis" or "severe dehydration."
A copy of Please Save My Earth Manga Vol 1 - lighter than a GBA, so it won. This was my piece of emergency entertainment in case I absolutely could not make it and had to stay behind somewhere for 12-24 hours. I figured that lugging a piece entertainment goods up the mountain would help ensure I didn't need to use it, and that being confident enough to leave it behind would mean twenty hours stuck in a mountain cabin with nothing to do.
Keitai (mobile phone) - So I could email friends and family throughout the climb, saying insightful things like "I'm tired" and "It's dark" and "I've been walking for five hours." Also, can be used in an emergency to contact the rest of the party in case of separation, assuming the battery hasn't been drained from sending pithy comments to friends and family.
Digital camera - To take pictures, which I did.
Four AA batteries - In case they were needed, and they were, when my headlamp went out at 2:45 AM. Preparedness rocks.
Piglet. He was going to have his picture taken at the top as the first Pooh character to scale Mt. Fuji; we didn't make it all the way, so he didn't get his picture taken. He's quite indignant that he had to stay scrunched in a backpack with ALL THIS STUFF for two days and didn't even get a photo op at the end of it. Next time, Piglet, next time.

Foodwise, I brought:

Cold soba platter
Bag of 6 rolls
Two raisin muffins
Chocobread
Two Snickers bars
Two bags of M&M's
1.5 liter bottle of water

In retrospect, I should have left most of the food behind and taken an extra liter of water. I didn't run out of water - or even come close, really - but I think it would have done me a lot more good during a mountain climb than raisin muffins. I mean, honestly.

NOTE TO SKIMMERS, MOUNTAIN CLIMBING STARTS HERE 
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If you've read this far, you're probably wondering when I'm going to get around to climbing the damned mountain. The answer is ... right ... now! The unfortunate truth, however, is that agonizing and preparing for a trip like this is a lot more exciting than climbing the mountain itself. Climbing Mt. Fuji is kind of like climbing up a very steep, very slow Stairmaster for eight hours, in the dark, then turning around and climbing back down for three. Scrape your hands against some rocks, wobble around like you're about to fall down every seventh step, and fall down and bang your shins once every twenty minutes. Tah dah! You've just completed The Fuji Experience.

We started climbing on Saturday afternoon around 1:30 PM. The first leg of the journey was fairly low key. Fuji, as you probably know, is a volcano; technically, though it hasn't erupted in nearly 300 years, an active one. The beginning of the path is just a gentle upwards slope, with a path that zigzagged slowly back and forth. It felt less like climbing up a mountain so much as meandering back and forth across the side. It was raining fairly seriously when we started. Everything in my backpack got soaked. Everything outside my backpack, too, self included. After about an hour, the rain stopped, and we got to see a lovely rainbow.

I've heard that it's important while climbing not to look down, but really, down isn't scary at all. Fuji has a nice, easy-to-climb path up the mountain (500,000 people climb a year, after all) with metal posts and chains along the edges. And even then, there's no point at which the path comes right up to a precipitous drop. Down is fine. The important thing, really, is to not look UP. If you look up, you'll see what looks like a 3,776 meter mountain looming in front of you ... because it IS! And your brain can't help but make the instantaneous mental assessment that trying to climb a mountain is probably impossible, and even if it's not impossible, it's definitely very, very stupid. Staying focused on the ground before your feet keeps the madness at bay.

So after about four hours of climbing (5:30 PM) we reach a mountain hut midway up the mountain. There are a number of these up and down the length of the path; small buildings that sell food, drink, and lodging ... for a price. The cost of food and drink goes up linearly with the height of the mountain; everything, after all, has to be lugged up the mountain by hand. There is no secret freight elevator. Prices start at 200y for a 500ml drink at the base and go up from there. A simple economic analysis reveals that it's as difficult to bring a 500ml plastic bottle of Coke to 3000 meters up Mt. Fuji (cost: 500y) as it is for Aramark to deliver comparable to the L.A. Convention Center during E3. Shocking, I know! Mountain huts have a generator for electricity, a meeting room for talking and eating, a bedroom two rows of solid plank bunk beds, and not much else. A single "bed" was the length of this entire room; everyone just piled on and hoped to sleep a decent enough distance away from other people. I think even in the military they're kind enough to keep your beds separated by actual physical space.

People live in these huts. Like, for real. And I thought that I lived on the top of a mountain! I can't imagine what it would be like to live somewhere where anytime you wanted to leave your house and go somewhere interesting it was two hours down and five back up, on foot. My guess is rather boring, yet astoundingly conducive to cardiovascular fitness.

As this was Miyazaki-sensei's twelfth time up the mountain, he had stayed at this hut several times before. In fact, he had called ahead to the proprietor and secured the entire hut for us for the evening. This is one of the many advantages of climbing Fuji with a seasoned Japanese expert instead of a bunch of ignorant JET yahoos. We took out the food we had lugged up and had something of a miniature party to celebrate the midway point. Everyone shared their food communally, and we had quite the feast, or as much of a feast as you can prepare with nothing but hot water boiled on gas burners. Still, you might be surprised, though; nineteen people can carry a lot of food, both in quantity and variety, up a mountain. Somewhat surprisingly (to me), a number of the men had chosen to bring beer or other alcohol up the mountain. "Japanese drinking habits are limited by neither time or space" was another important lesson learned this weekend. Around 7:00 PM we went to sleep until midnight, when we would wake up and continue the ascent.

Day two began by losing my hat. I woke up about 11:45 PM, put on my jacket and hat, and stepped out into the dark to use the restroom. Suddenly, my hat was gone. A shockingly strong gust of wind swooped down and snatched away my lovely light blue cap, a cap purchased EXPRESSLY for the purpose of climbing Mt. Fuji. On my head one moment and out of sight the next. I was heartbroken, to be sure, but there was nothing I could do. The hat was gone. Gone!

This was a harbinger of things to come.

Back in the hut, everyone was groggily grumbling their way awake. We collected our bags, packed up our trash (you carry back down what you carry up; there is no Tuesday/Friday pickup halfway up the mountain), and set out. The second half of the journey was much steeper than the first; instead of a sloping path that wound back and forth across the face of the mountain, it was now a crosswise series of steep and rocky steps cut roughly into the side.

It was dark, now, of course; it does that around midnight. Though the rain had stopped, the wind had picked up and was incredibly strong. Exhibit A being the cruel theft of my headgear. The only light we had were the headlamps strapped to our foreheads, so for the next two and a half hours, almost all that I saw was a small, dimming circle of light illuminating the back of the feet of the person in front of me. From far above, you could sometimes see the lights of a distant mountain hut, but they were hazy and indistinct, just a bright splotch in the sky. Step, step, step, step, step.

When we reached a hut/waystation at 3100m, we started to notice people turning around. Miyazaki-sensei asked other groups what was going on; apparently, the wind was strong enough that a weather advisory had been issued and climbers were being asked to turn around. The wind speed at that height was around 17 m/s, which works out to around 38 mph. That is awfully fast. We stopped at the station for about fifteen minutes, staring at the furthest light up the mountain - the summit, it was - and wondering what we should do. The strong winds buffeting us while we sat and thought made the final decision inevitable, but nobody climbs Mt. Fuji to 3100m, within sight of the summit, and decides to turn around lightly. As we rested there, thinking, sitting down on the ground to keep from getting knocked over by the wind, watching the hordes of people stream back down past us, our ultimate decision was inevitable. We sighed, resigned ourselves to fate, and started back down.

In many ways the trip down was more difficult than the trip up. Climbing up is difficult, of course, but you can always find your footing before shifting your weight. Each step down is a step into the unknown; you have to trust that where your foot lands will be close enough and level enough that you can keep your balance. Also, on the way up, the next step is close enough to your headlamp that you can see it clearly. Down, it's just far enough that the limited range of the headlamp doesn't hit the path. So most of the way down was spent desperately clinging to the chain on the side of the path, falling tiny one-foot drops with each step, flailing around desperately after each stride, trying not to fall over. I was usually successful. From time to time, an especially strong burst of wind would make everyone drop to the ground at once for safety, huddling until the wind had passed and it was safe to continue.

Around 4:00 AM, we reached the hut where we had stayed the previous night. I stayed up with some others long enough to watch the incredibly beautiful sunrise (about 4:15-4:45), then went back to sleep until 8:00 AM. I slept extraordinarily well.

By the time I woke up at 8:00 AM it was raining again. Fuji's weather was kind enough to provide the twin challenges of rain and darkness, but never simultaneously. I went outside while others were packing up, walked over to the railing, looked around, and saw - could it be? Off in the distance? MY HAT!!! I was thrilled. I could barely see it from the hut, but it was there, a small splotch of light blue against the green and brown and black of the mountainside. It was off the path, of course. I weighed the pros and cons of retrieving it for a few minutes (Pros: I would get my nifty 800y hat back; Cons: I would have to leave the safety of the path and foray into the potentially fatal wilderness of Mt. Fuji). In the end, valor, materialism, and sentimentality prevailed over reason and self-preservation, and I set off to retrieve my hat. It was MY hat, goddamn it, and if I was going to have to leave Mt. Fuji without reaching the top then I was sure as hell going to at least take my hat back with me.

So I lept ungloriously over the side of the railing and stumbled the 50 or so meters to my hat, picked it up, brushed it off, put it on triumphantly, and realized I couldn't go back the way I came. Oops. I started picking out another path back to the hut, zigzagging my way up the mountain, when SUDDENLY and WITHOUT WARNING the ground CRUMBLED BENEATH me and I started to fall off the edge of the mountain OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo! I know you are on the edge of your seat wondering if I survived or not, but don't worry, I did! I twisted around and grabbed onto the roots of a nearby bush and scrambled my way back up to safety! Wow, that was so close! And all for the love of my hat. (The drop, I should probably mentioned was only about six or seven feet; it would hardly have killed me, and probably wouldn't have injured me, but it's a far more exciting story if I act like I was dangling over the edge of forever.)

So my hat, believed lost forever, was returned to its rightful owner, and this part of the Fuji story has a happy ending after all.

Not much left to tell; we stumbled down the mountain, saw some horses on the way down. Purchased cookies in a box that says "Mt. Fuji" on them with which to appease our coworkers on Monday. The wind by this point had really picked up, making it hard to walk at the base; we could only imagine what it must have been like on the mountain face itself, now. I was extremely, extremely tired. We drove back to Fujioka in Gunma and a few hours later celebrated our successful climb with food and drink at a Chinese restaurant. We may not have reached the top, but everyone still had a great time and made it back safely from dangerously inclement weather, and there's quite a lot in that. I ate two meals and an appetizer (spicy chicken noodles, Peking Duck, and a plate of gyozas) and didn't order more only out of a desire to appear restrained. I had worked up rather the appetite.

Near the end, I commented to one of the other members of our party that it was too bad we didn't make it to the top this time, but there was always next year, wasn't there?

"Next year?" said Miyazaki-sensei, who had overheard my lament. "No, no. Next month. In August, during Obon. We're going to go again. Are you coming?"

Maybe I was tired and not thinking clearly. Or maybe I just really want to see the top. But, God help me, I agreed.

I'll get back to you.