Japan

I'm here! In fact, I've been in Japan for a week now. It's wonderfully hot and humid. After having to go through the Minnesota winter, followed by the New Zealand winter, summer is a welcome change.

I've already checked off one big item on my to do list. Last Saturday I climbed Mt. Fuji. There were eight of us, in total. Although many people do the ascent as an overnight trip, we decided to try to do it in one day. It was the most physically challenging thing I've ever done. To put it into context, when Josie and I hiked the Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand, we hiked up to just over 1,000 meters above sea level. The Fuji hike begins at 2,400 meters, and the summit is 3,776 meters.

The ascent took five hours. It's a brutal hike. The path is gravelly, rocky, and steep. For much of the time we were surrounded by cloud cover, and couldn't see far ahead. Every once in a while the wind would blow away the clouds and blue sky would come out. That's mainly when I took pictures. About three and a half hours into the hike, it started raining. I had my rain jacket, but not my rain pants. We hiked for about half an hour in the rain. As we walked, I kept saying to myself, "okay, it's time to give up now. I'm not going to walk for another hour in the pouring rain. I'm done."

At the next rest stop, it stopped raining and the sun came out. A rainbow appeared among the puffy white clouds to the east. And I thought, "are you kidding me??" Because I had to go on. How could I possibly give up when the universe had so clearly given me a sign that it was okay to go on. Stupid universe.

The last part of the hike went very slowly. I'd never been to such a high elevation before in my life, aside from being in a plane. It feels like there's nothing to breathe. I could hardly walk, because no air was coming into my lungs. I would hike for about 30 seconds, then have to stop and rest. I had purchased a can of aerosol oxygen at the beginning of the hike. I used it several times along the last few hundred meters of the climb. Every time I started climbing, my heart rate spiked and I was afraid I would black out. I didn't.

The last hundred meters of the climb felt like the longest. I was putting one foot in front of the other; I had ceased caring about reaching the top, and just wanted it to be over. As I climbed over the last few rocks, I wanted to collapse. I managed to make it to a bench, where I had another hit of oxygen, and a peanut butter sandwich.

We reached the summit at 6:30 PM. The descent took another four hours, and had to be done in the dark (Japan doesn't do daylight savings, so the sun set at 7:30). I had a flashlight, so it wasn't terrible, but the mountain just kept going down and down, with no end in sight. There were other hikers walking up the mountain as we were going down. We could see a winding line of hikers' head lamps shining below us like fireflies, showing us the trail down. We saw two fireworks displays from above.

I don't have any pictures from the descent, because they wouldn't have turned out in the dark. But here are my pictures from the ascent. Enjoy.