Tsukuba-Dooba-Doo

"If you never climb Mt. Fuji once, you are a fool.  If you climb it twice, you are twice the fool" 

Immediately after deciding to come to Japan, conquering Mt. Fuji jumped to the top of my "I-must-do-these-things-or-I'm-an-idiot" list.  In fact, I remember the exact moment, way back in February, when Nancy said that she and Hal wanted to climb it with us.  Word on the street is that watching the sun rise from the top of Mt. Fuji is breathtaking.  So, our plan was to hike up to a mountain hut, sleep for a couple hours, then wake up and finish the hike in time to watch the sun rise.  

Mt. Fuji, or Fuji-san, is one of Japan's most iconic natural wonders.  Its almost perfect cone towers over the land at 3776 m (12,388 ft or 2.3 miles) high.  About 10 months out of the year it is snow capped, which saturates the trails in July-August with an insane frenzy of summit seekers.  We aimed to be among these crowds vying for a spot up top.

In order to get to the trail-head (5th station) by 1:00pm, we had to leave Tsukuba by 7:25am.  5 hours, 5 trains, and 1 bus ride later we were welcomed by hundreds of people at the 5th station.  



As soon as we steeped off of the bus we were hit with an air of excitement.  It took half an hour to check out the area and buy some climbing sticks.  These aren't just any climbing sticks!  These are official Mt. Fuji climbing sticks!  This means that along ascent, as you pass the stations you can get that station's logo burned onto your stick.  By the end of the hike, most of the real estate on your stick is filled up with these cool logos.  Most of these also have the elevation of that station and the year.  Pretty sweet, huh?  Below is a photo of mine after half of the hike. 


Ok, so after all that jazz, we finally started the hike.  It all felt very surreal to finally be on the trail at Mt. Fuji.  Everyone was super excited and full of energy.  As we walked along the first stretch, we passed people who were just finishing.  In retrospect, I should have gotten a clue from the people who looked like they had just come from a long, fierce battle.  However, my blissfulness blinded me as I practically skipped along the trail for the first 30 minutes.    



There isn't too much to be said about the climb except that it was harder than I thought.  There are some sections that are fairly steep.  Not to mention, there are times where you have to stand in line as the masses bottleneck. 



This is where we were assigned to sleep...ugh...I could devote an entire post to the sleeping experience, but I will try to be brief.  As you can see we are are very close together and I was sleeping about 3" from another lady on my right.  That mixed with the cold, noises, bright lights, vibrations from people walking around, and overall discomfort meant that none of us slept more than a wink.  


It was definitely more crowded at these early hours than it was during the day.  As we looked down the mountain side, we could see a river of lights trickling up the mountain.  By 3am we had finally staggered through he gates at the top. There were already a huge plethora of people up top and from the looks of the river of lights down the mountain, there were going to be a lot more.  We decided to stake out a good spot and wait.  We waited for over an hour in crazy coldness and then finally....walaaa!  






Quite frankly we were too tired to gawk at the top for too long so we started our descent.  Again...this was harder than I thought it would be.  You have to take a different trail going down, which amounts to about 4 hours of rocky, slippery, quad-killing switchbacks.  

"The Lewins are coming! The Lewins are coming!"  Although I wasn't yelling this on horseback like Paul Revere, this phrase kept running through my mind as I tried to fall asleep the night before Katie's parents arrived in Japan for their 8 day visit.

It was guaranteed to be a full throttle week jam-packed with everything Japan has to offer: squeezing through its crowded train stations (Tokyo), sitting atop its highest mountain (Mt. Fuji), and swimming in its crystal clear waters (Sea of Japan). All the while, we would be taking in the both traditional and contemporary culture.  However, before we could do all of this fantastic stuff, we had to rent a car and pick up Hal and Nancy from the airport.

 
Honestly, I wasn't too nervous about renting a car with the steering wheel on the right side and driving on the left side of the road.  It was very black and white for me:  I'm either going to kill us within 5 minutes, or we will be fine.  Once we got the first couple of white-knuckled turns over with, it became second nature.  Actually, not driving any sort of motorized vehicle for 5 months probably helped me with the transition. 


We cruised to the airport and were happy to see that Hal and Nancy made it here without incident.  After a brief Hallmark moment, we loaded their/our luggage (we made them bring about 50 lbs. of food) into the car and puttered back to Tsukuba.  On the way back we spotted a BIG Buddha towering over the treeline.  Since we had the car for 24 hours, we planned to seek this out the following morning.  Once we were back to the Ninomiya House, Hal and Nancy unpacked and went to bed.  Katie and I frantically unpacked our ridiculous amounts of American food such as popcorn, green chili, and beef jerky.  Christmas came early for the Walkers!    

The next day everyone woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Hal and Nancy seemed relatively unaffected from jet lag so we made short work of breakfast and headed to the big Buddha.  I don't think you understand when I say big Buddha...its really big, like Guinness Book of World Records big!  Its about 430 feet tall, which is more than twice the height of the statue of liberty.  Once again...BIG!


There were some gorgeous flower beds and paper lanterns all around the area so we took pictures. 





Later that night we had a reservation at the apartment for the 9th floor "Communication Salon" which is spacious room with a small kitchen, pool table, piano, big screen TV, and a stellar view of Tsukuba.  The Haines family joined us as we enjoyed sushi, wine, cheese, and sake.  I had a wonderful time relaxing and shooting the breeze with everyone for a couple of hours.  I tried to savior every moment because the next day was TOKYO.