Goal #1 CHECK!!!

If you remember way back, I made a list of goals for Japan right after I got here.  I have revisited it a few times, but that first goal was always just hanging there, being unattainable.  WELL...I went last weekend and CLIMBED MT FUJI!  Goal #1, complete!

Let's go through the weekend.

Friday...I left school early and took my final kanji test.  And then Kim, Carolyn and I drove to Kawaguchiko.  There are a few trails that lead up Mt. Fuji, but we chose the most popular, the Yoshida Trail, which starts from Kawaguchiko city in Yamanashi Prefecture.  We stayed at a really convenient hotel right near Kawaguchiko station that had free parking for us.

Saturday...Fuji-Q Highland!  It's an amusement park with some crazy roller coasters.  I was too scared to go on most of them, but Kim and Carolyn convinced me to go on one that goes from 0 to 172km/hr in 1.8 seconds.  It then loops around, goes straight up and comes straight back down.  I screamed my head off, and I think every four-letter word I know came out of my mouth at one point.  But it was fun.  I am really not good at drops.  I prefer loops.  We also rode the log flume that has a splash so big, they suggest you purchase a poncho prior to riding.  I am very glad I got a poncho.  After FujiQ we went to Lake Kawaguchi to take pretty pictures of Fuji and the water.

Me with one of the FujiQ characters, "Blue"

The only ride I rode.  It was terrifying.

Fuji, Lake Kawaguchi and a swan boat.

 Sunday...check out of the hotel, bus up to the 5th station!!!  We started our climb at the 5th station which is about halfway up.  We ate lunch first, bought a few more drinks, cans of oxygen in case of altitude sickness, postcards and stamps to mail from the top, a few more snacks, and then we CLIMBED!  We started about 1ish, I think.  I had reserved us beds at a lodge at the 7th station so we got there at about 4pm and rested a bit, ate dinner, watched the sun set, etc.

At the 5th station.

This way up!

Our lodge, Tomoe-kan.

inside of the lodge.

 Monday...At midnight, we got up and continued our climb, using our handy dandy headlamps since the trail is not lit at all.  At this point, my left hip was not cooperating at all.  Like grinding and really, really, really painful, so we were pretty slow moving and did not make it all the way to the top for the sunrise, but we did make it to station 8.5 where we saw one of the most amazing sunrises ever.  We were incredibly lucky with weather, so it was dry and clear and not too cold, although it was really windy, like almost get blown off the mountain windy.  But seriously, we could have been climbing in the rain.  Or it could have just been cloudy.  It was neither.

8th station!

first signs of sun

more sun

and beautiful!

Monday (still).  After sunrise, we continued up to the top.  We probably got to the top at 7ish?  I wasn't really checking my watch, but sunrise was 4:37.  The top was SO windy!!!  It was sort of cold, but if we were moving, it was not a problem for me.  I bought a hot chocolate and ate my breakfast.  I also got some top of the mountain only souvenirs.  We checked out the crater, found the post office and mailed our postcards (we were lucky!  the post office opened July 14...we were there on the 16) and then began our descent.

crowded.

At the top!!!!!

Looking down at the people climbing up

I made it!!

this is pretty much everything on the top.  If you walk around the crater, you can get to a post office and there is some sort of building, but mostly, this is it.

crater

post office! 

Normally you have this kind of view from an airplane.  Well, I was on top of a mountain.

 Monday (still still).  We started down at about 9am.  We got to the bottom at about 1.  And let me say, those were quite possibly the worst four hours of my life.  The way down is just zig zags back and forth of rocky, slippery paths.  Thank GOD it was not raining at all because as it was, I fell at least 10 times.  My knees hurt a bit, but not nearly as much as I expected, and not nearly as much as my hips.  It was also pretty windy on the way down, so sometimes we just had to stop and protect our faces from the dust pelting us.  When I got to the bottom, my eyes, ears and nose were full of Fuji dust.

snow on the way down.

this is what the whole way down looked like.  rocky slopes.

 Monday (still still still)  So 1pm...been awake for 11 hours at this point.  We ate a quick lunch at the 5th station and then took the bus back to Kawaguchiko.  We showered at the hotel we had stayed at and then drove home.  I got home at about 9.  That is a long time being awake.

I am really glad I climbed it and all in all it was a positive experience.  But, there is a saying in Japan that translated roughly to you would be stupid to not climb Mt Fuji once, but you would be stupid to climb it twice.  I completely understand this saying.  I am not sure I would ever want to climb it again.

Some other things...

Thankfully, we were all fine with the altitude.  I did not need to use my can of oxygen.  I think I can probably thank my hip for the nice, slow pace we were forced to take.


I bought a mini version of the walking stick at our lodge, and I got it branded at the 8th station and then again at the top.  It was a really good solution.  I wanted one of the poles to get branded but I was not sure how to get it back to America (It would have been like 4 feet tall).  Also, I am really glad I did not have one, because there were places where I needed both my hands to climb and having a pole would have been a problem.  Coming down, I wish I had had a pole of some sort.  Oh well.

my mini walking stick!

and the other side.  The top-most stamp is from the top of the mountain.

I never got to ask someone...but I wonder where the people who work at the lodges live...like, do they stay there 2 weeks and then climb down?  What about the people at the top working in the post office and in the souvenir shops?  Do they stay up there a few days or weeks?!  just some food for thought.


A few Fuji fun facts:


Fuji is 3776m tall.
It is the highest mountain in Japan
It is a dormant volcano.  It last erupted in 1707-08.
On average, it takes 5-6 hours to climb up and 3-4 to climb down from the 5th station.
Mt. Fuji has been submitted as a Cultural (not Natural) World Heritage Site.


Ok...that's all folks!

some numbers

• 806: minutes until I am officially past the quarter-century hump. (not excited) I think looking forward to and then enjoying my birthday is a thing of my past.
• 2,200: average number of steps I take every day at school. (not bad considering it is the bare minimum for just going to and from class, making copies, etc)
• 5: bruises I have from trying Judo last night. One of them is on my spine from trying to learn how to fall properly.  The fact that I have a bruise there means I did not succeed.
• 3: books I have read in their entirety since Saturday (50 Shades of Grey...yeah I read them.  And I liked them.  And I just admitted that I liked them on a public blog)
• 2: kanji tests I took yesterday (don't know if I passed yet)
• 21: days of school where I will actually teach at least one class (!!!!!!)
• 43: days until I leave Iiyama 
• 44376: 43 days in hours.
• 2662560: 43 days in minutes
• 56: days until I board a plane to return to America
• 5: members of my favorite J-pop group, Arashi
• 23: days until my last kanji test (probably not going to pass!)

well...

I lied.  I know.  I was supposed to write posts for last Thursday and Friday and I didn't!!    But I am posting now, so...

Just a quick post about one thing in Japan I will not miss...bureaucracy.

I had to renew my driver's (drivers'?) license on Monday.  I hear you thinking "what is so hard about that?  send in the form!  or go stand in line at the DMV and bam! done!"  Well...no.  In Japan, you have to sit through a lecture.  If it is your first time renewing a license, then the lecture is 2 hours.  After that, just one hour. 

Let me walk you through the whole process.

Paperwork hours are 1-2.  I got there at 12:50.  There were already 30 people there.  You get in the first line...they scan your license in this cool machine which prints out a paper that has your license (front and back) and then things to fill out.  Then you pay (it costs 4000yen) and they have stamps for this, so when you pay, they stick stamps to a piece of paper.  Usually they give you the paper and you go to a different window, but in this case, they stick the stamps on the paper, you write your name on the paper, and give it right back to them.  What a waste of a piece of paper, eh!  ok...proceed to tables where you fill out a form about medical stuff (I did it in japanese and they were all very impressed.)  go to room to get eyes checked.  that was fun.  NOT.  Last time I was there, I had some help explaining about my eye, but I was on my own this time, so it was a bit of a mess.  but she let it go, thankfully.  Go to a window and turn in all the forms filled out up to this point.  receive another form and a colored tag.  Go to a room to get new picture taken (No smiling!!) turn in form after taking picture.  Go upstairs to classroom and sign in.   OK STOP for a moment.  I am not sure you are getting quite how hectic the process was.  Also, please remember that this was all happening in Japanese and also that there were people everywhere at all the different windows and stations.  It was really overwhelming.

Ok, let's proceed upstairs.  I was the first one there, so I sorta wandered around a bit, took a picture of the projector cause I am weird, bought a bottle of tea and went back in.  The lecture was the biggest waste of time ever.   We started with a video that just showed accidents and how/why they happen.  It broke down reasons behind accidents into categories: ignoring traffic sings (running a red light for example and hitting someone who had the right of way) or driver negligence? (there is a better word, but it was like the driver was texting or looked down to do something).  After the video, the guy talked for an hour and a half.  Besides the fact that I was the only foreigner suffering through it, the information itself was just irrelevant.  It was all statistics about accidents and numbers of people who have licenses in all of Japan and then Nagano specifically.  It was the kind of information that should be in a pamphlet for people to read while they are in the driving center waiting room or something.  It is not something that they need to waste time saying out loud.  I know there were people sitting behind me who kept falling asleep because the lecturer kept waking them up.  It was seriously boring.  But this is Japan.  They have the power to make people sit through things like that, so they do.  I am not sure what I think would be a good use of time, but not these stupid statistics.  Oh well. It is done and I can now legally drive in Japan until July 21, 2015!

Picture of the screen. Cause I know you were curious.