I Climbed Mt.Fuji! Mt.Fuji Gallery

These are pictures when I climbed Mt.Fuji last year with my American husband and my parents.

We lived near Tokyo, so we took a Shinkansen (a bullet train / an express) 'Kodama' from shinagawa and got off at shin-fuji station. My parents were coming by their car from the opposite direction, Hiroshima, we met at the station and took the same car to get to Mt.Fuji.
If you have a car you can also get there by a car, without taking trains.
We took Fujinomiya root.
You can climb by a car and get to the parking lot near the fifth station.
It is the final spot that you can use your car. Everyone must get off the car there.
There you can change your clothes and be ready, bring only what you really need.
You take bus or taxi and get to the 5th station. It takes about 20 min.
It is very hot there! You will feel good!
It is already 2,400m ( 7,500 feet ) above sea level. We suddenly came this higher ground by a car, I did not think about it, but you are already getting high-altitude headache since you climbed by a car so quickly...

You used to see some trees earlier from the car, but here no more trees. In stead of that there are some weeds and floweres.

We can see grooves of bulldozers. I heard that they are carrying water or food to mountain huts.
I do not think they can reach almost the top of the mountain, though...

Slope is still okay. We can see pretty floweres there:)
I also can see bulldozers' grooves there.
Lots of people are climbing in a line. They look fine and are having fun!

It's g meetting steep slope.
It was close from the 5th station to 6th station, but we still can not see the 7th station though we walked and walked.
Repeating "How much longer?","How much longer?", I started having a headacke.
We walk in the clouds, so it is very foggy there, som meetimes we even could not see ater ( 3.3 fe meet ) ahead.
It is dangerous that we can not see. Watch out!

Oh boy! Finelly it started terrible raining with thunder, lightning!!
We wore our rain coats in a hurry. We did not want to get wet all over. It's chilly, which we even could not imagine at the 5th station earlier.
We can see the mountain hut where we are supposed to stay tonight far away from us near the top of the mountain.
It looks so high and small, it will take at least 3 more hours... Everyone is getting tired and in a bad mood...
Someone even started saying "Let's go home!". This is the hardest part of the climbing.
Sudden of rain fall, thunder, lightning, headache...
We might not be able to see nothing even if we made it to the top... but we alerady came this far, so we shoud g meet to our mountain hut and check in. We need to rest anyway. And then tomorrow morning, we will see. It depends on the weather and our health condition...
It's funny but it is natural for us to get through those natural disasters which everyone experiences, since we definitely have to walk through the rainy clouds or thunder clouds to achieve the top the mountain.
It is seriously inevitable...

30min had passed, then suddenly rainy clouds were all gone! What's going on?
The clouds passed so quickly. We turned around and found that we already climbed this much!!
Wow!!! This is amazing!!!

People who want some rest stay at a mountain hut and lay down or take a nap.
There is no shower, though.
If you can make a reservation in advance, it is good, but you can offer to stay there the day without reservation, too.
We stayed at the gunso(=original) 7th station. Lately they built the new 7th station a bit lower place because it is really far between 6th and 7th stations.
We ate curry and rice for dinner.
We sleep with other people whom you've never seen before in the same room. He or she has to sleep the very next to you. It was really tight.
You even cannot turn over and sometimes you have to feel other peoples' arms or legs coming on you. but please just be patient. Mountain hut is not a fancy hotel, you know. It is a place where people can rest temporarily under the roof avoiding rain or wind or coldness.
While we are having rest, other people are steadily climbing in the darkness.
They all put the head light on. They might stay at 8th or 9th station.
Those lights become a long line of illumination along to the mountain slope, it was really fantastic!!
Also I felt safe. In this place, such a high place in the mountain, lots of people are challenging Mt.Fuji.
It was really nice. Look! How tough they are! They don't give up at all! We were already whining... What a shame! We must stop that.

It is 4 o'clock in the morning. It is early sunrising. We went out and tried to see it.
We are still very sleepy, half dreaming, but it's g meetting lighter and lighter out.
When we woke up, the mountain hut owners gave us Japanese style lunch box. You can also buy a piece of cream bread and milk.

Wow!! Finally it showed up！！
Suddenly sunlight shined on everywhere and it got so light!! It was too bright for my sleepy eyes.
The air is so refreshing!!!

Still the sun is rising so quickly. People were taking pictures with the memorial sun rising.
Everyone is so happy about the weather today. Sunny!

Sun is so beautiful!! Fabulous!!!
First I did not wake up, but it was right decition to wake up. If I missed this beautiful sun rising, I would have regr meeted... Watching the sun rising deserves to be worth as making to the top!!

It's so beautiful sunny day today.
but I should rather say, we've just come above the clouds. That is why there is no rain or thunders no more.
There are 2 colors in the sky. We also can see this line separating the sky from airplains.
We finally came to such a high up in the air!!
Oh, my parents are waving to us down there! How small they are!!
No, probably the rock is just too big... all rocks are so big here!! Why?? How did they become so big like that?!

Look!!
Look at the big cloud, the big two-color sky, the wild landscape, and the person standing there!
This is actually one of my most favorite pictures.

Som meetimes a huge cloud passes through us with very cold wind.
Those clouds go up to the top of the mountain.
When those clouds pass, we can not see nothing because of the fog. We just feel moisture. and then, once the clouds gone, suddenly we can see again.
It is really weird...

See, you can see little clouds down there, also you can manage to see tiny little towns, too!! cool!

The more you g meet to higher, red/orange rocks are g meetting black.
There is more flowers or plants.
It's really wild and lonelysome.

However we feel as if we can reach the top very soon, we can not g meet there so easily in a short time because we have to walk sideways like a snake. I wish if we could go up straight...
There are many rocks, too. Walking is getting do difficult and hard. Be careful not to slip and fall down.
Now you really need a stick to climb.
You can get a wooden, thick, long, heavy stick in a mountain hut, but if you have a stick for hiking or climbing, it will be much better.

here is a board written "We made it! Mt.Fuji is the best mountain in Japan!".
This is the entrance of the top of Mt.Fuji. But not the top yet, actually.
It must be very hard to build the gurd frame; Torii Gate, or the blue board.
How did they carry the stuff??

Finally we are standing at the top of Mt.Fuji!! Here is a shrine, a post office, a store for suveniors, a small restaurant, and a b meethroom.
The restautran has only 700 yen instant noodles, 500 yen instant coffee, 500 yen instant soup.
They have only light instant food and hot water in pods.
It is so expensive here!!
In a mountain hut, still noodles were like 500 yen, a bottle of mineral water or a cup of coffee was like 300 yen for each...
I guess we mostly pay for the labour to carry these foods or beverages to the top of Mt.Fuji.
Now l meet's go see the volcanic crater!!

You can see the weather station on the hill at the left side.
It seems to be built the highest place on the top.
I wonder how the government built that... It must be tremendous of labour and time!

Just 10 min has passed. It is the same place but we got a fog and can not see the weather station any more.
The weather in the mountain changes in every minite.
the dark blue dots on the left side are humans.
They look very small but 3 people are walking there.
The top of Mt.Fuji was much bigger than I thought.

The picture above is just a small part of the volcanic crater.
I put that picture to show you how small humans look like. This is the entire crater.
It is so big and deep. If I fell, it will be really hard to come back.
It was interesting to that whole crater was covered with cray. I stupidly believed that I can see some magma if I look into the cray.
It is said that walking along the cray is good.
People who are standing across the cray are too small to see!
I really wanted to walk around the cray, but unfortunatelly I had to work the next day in Tokyo, so I gave it up and went back home.


Did you like the Mt.Fuji travel note? Unexpectedlly, there were lots of red/orange or black rocks, and the top of the mountain was really wild.
I don't know why there are no flowers or plants there. May be bacause winter season is too long, or too high above sea level, or volcanic soil is not good for greens... but it was really surprising for.
I really realized that Mt. Fuji was a volcano.
If there were no one else, the climbing would be really lonely and scary.
Thank you for all of climbers, people in the mountain huts. You all were so kind to us. It was really nice to meet you there.
I wonder how many people are challenging Mt.Fuji this summer again...
Mt. Fuji became my favorite mountaion. I actually would like to climb Mt.Fuji every summer! I was so fascinated...

Enjoy your climbing Mt.Fuji!! Have a safe trip!
Ciao Ciao /"""

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