Countries Of My Life: Fuji-san and Onsen

Hey guys, what's up? :D
This weekend I tried to climb at Fuji-san / Mt. Fuji to see the sunrise from the top. But unfortunately the gods didn't sent the weather I wished, so we had the whole night and morning storm and rain. So climbing up to the top was too dangerous (so they said). But let's start with the first day:

5th Station at Fuji-san

The trip was planned by my friend Mika-san. She adviced me in the first place about the things I had to bring with me. So we met at saturday in the early afternoon at the station where I also got to know our companion Nogiwa-san. He is a friend of Mika-san and also an expert of climbing at Fuji-san. After a short trip to the nearest stores to buy the last things we needed, we already drove by car to Fuji-san.

The start of the Trail

So we drove until the 5th station, the last big one at Fuji-san where you can buy all the things you can / will need for climbing. I know, it looks like some kind of cheating, if you don't start from the bottom. But even if you start from this station, it's already high enough to the top :D

Because we already had everthing we needed, we started our trip and took the so called "Yoshida Trail" which seems to be the most popular one. Everytime I saw lots of people. I have to say the climbing went very well. I heard of the so called "mountain sickness" before, so I wasn't really sure if I could do this trip until the end. Because of the low amount of oxygen at this height, some people collapse and had to go down, so I heard.

View from Fuji-san
Unfortunately just clouds :(

But the trick is to get used to the thinner air by breathing deep and by not going too fast. I did this and I didn't felt dizzy what's one of the first symptoms of mountain sickness. Thank God for giving us mortals Internet ;)

Unfortunately we also had clouds the whole time, so I couldn't really see something from the mountain which is a little bit sad. I just could see about 50 meters at this day. But nevertheless it was a really good training for my condition, so it wasn't wasted time :)

Nogiwa-san and me

The plan was to get to our station at the mountain, sleep there until 1am (we did a reservation before) and then climb the rest of the way to the top. Maybe a quarter of our way to the station was really climbing, so the way went really straight up. But with workers gloves and shoes with thick sole, this was just a matter of time ^^

Curry Rice!

This part was really exhausting but I went steady and could keep up with the others. At 8pm we arrived at our station where we got curry rice for dinner and our breakfast for the next morning which consisted of sweet bread, a sausage made of fish and green tea. Of course I also brought my own food, so I didn't have to worry about starving :D

Until then we hadn't experienced any rain but after that came the night. As I already said, rain and strong wind came started and was also there during the morning. So we could sleep longer.

our station - sooo close to the top ;)

At 5:30am we woke up and about 6:30am we went down to the 5th station with another large group. Because Nogiwa-san, our expert, didn't experienced our way down we took before, it was a safer option. But from my point of view, the way was so easy, there was nothing to worry about.

Fuji-san at noon, still clouds
View from Karaguchiko - one of
the 5 lakes from Fuji-san

So what did we do after this? Of course, we didn't went home right away. First we went to an Onsen in a town nearby. If you don't know Onsen, it's a hot spring, many times also a natural one. Ours wasn't such one but this wasn't bad because it was my first time visiting an Onsen :)

Short introduction: Before getting into the hot spring, you have to clean yourself. That's clear because others want also to use it. After that you can get into the hot water.

Sightseeing
at the ponds of Fuji-san

It was really good to relax the muscles after climbing up Fuji-san. So I also hadn't aching muscles the days after ^^ I can really recommend Onsen, it's like a big hot bath. And I'm excited to experience it in Hokkaido during the winter. Maybe there will be also monkeys in there, just relaxing like everyone else. (no joke!) Japan, you will be forever a country of wonders for me :D

Water from Fuji-san
to be honest: tastes just like water

After relaxing, we went also in the town for sight seeing. For example, we drank water from Mount Fuji out of a spring. Okay, not really from the spring itself, but it came from there straight ^^

This weekend was a trip I really enjoyed even it didn't worked out as planned. But I feel this wasn't the last time I climbed up at Fuji-san :)

And because we all love pictures, here some more impressions from the sightseeing afterwards.