Fuji-san: Beating the legend (Part 2/2)

However… The worst (and definitely the most memorable…) part of the whole climb had yet to begin!
What could be worst and most memorable parts at the same time, you ask? It’s freaking low temperature on the peak and the Japanese Anti-gaijin Weather Forecast Programme created to annihilate all living non-Japanese creatures who dared to step on sacred boulders of Mt. Fuji… Ahem.
Anyway, the weather forecast for that day was about 5+°C during the night and until the morning, so we thought it’d be OK not to bring too many warm clothes and other such stuff, that we can’t freeze in “5°C” in the Land of the Rising Sun on the top of the Mount of the Rising Sun. How naïve gaijin can be… I felt like a deep-freezed tuna fish. Twice. All the mentioned gods of Fuji-san and the Anti-gaijin god together must have tried their best to freeze the hell out of us. I swear the temperature fell to about minus 8 degrees as soon as we found a place to sit and finally settled down. What worse, we had to wait for about 1 and a half or 2 hours until the sunrise we had all been awaiting so desperately and for which we actually started this insane night trip. Oh, and I mustn’t omit the Fog of Conspiracy (read: …just a thick fog) which suddenly appeared out of literally nowhere, about 30 minutes before the sunrise and through which we couldn’t see a thing further than maybe in an 8-meter distance! Great! Just great…
We sat in a close circle in a corner behind the torii gate and the whole situation looked something like this...:

“It’s cold, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s cold isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s cold, isn’t it?”
“Yes…”
“It’s cold isn’t it?”
“Shut your mouth already!”
.
.
“Wanna candy?”
“Yes.”
.
.
“It’s cold isn’t it?”

And that’s not a lie, that guy kept repeating it all the time until the sunrise. Besides this, there was this guy lying just next to us under a door casing… He looked dead. I wouldn’t say “cold as a corpse” since we all were colder than any corpses in Japan, but he didn’t move at all and he was completely stuffed into his sleeping bag. Oh boy, Fuji-san is not only filled with no one but gaijin, almighty obaachan and deadly coldness, but it’s filled with geeks and it’s creepy as well. After some 30 minutes, our brains got so collectively frozen solid, we started to say “It’s cold, isn’t it?” automatically one after another without even bothering to reply.
It was cold, wasn’t it…?

But at last, the moment of sunrise was drawing near. We stood up and headed for some rocks on the east side from which the visibility seemed better. So, I myself managed to find such a rock and I had to wait for another 15 minutes like sapper in a war. It was these 15 minutes when I thought I’d really pass away freezing. The thing is, wind started to blow so strong I couldn’t even hold my camera or walk without caution. I’ve never felt so cold in my whole life. x_x

Eventually, the moment has come. The sunrise! But since I couldn’t see a thing due to thick fog and other large rocks directly covering the sun, I decided to move to that place instead.

The scenery was fantastic! Fabulous! Magnificent!
Fog disappeared quickly and what was left was only the strong and very cold wind, rising sun and an ocean of clouds below us lightened by this beautiful, yet still weak sun. If you’ve ever tried to imagine the paradise, it might have looked exactly like this. Well, except for the wind and absence of angels. There are photos below, so see for yourselves.

But to not make things so perfect, the Anti-gaijin god striked again and I realised that I had forgotten my camera batteries at home. And the only batteries I had at the moment…were as good as dead. Damn it! But, fortunately, I still managed to capture most of the most beautiful scenes and in one place, where I desperately needed my camera, but it was grinning at me dead, I met small and kind young Japanese group and they took photos with their camera using my memory card for me. So thanks to them, I have beautiful pictures of clouds with a triangle-shaped shadow of Fuji-san on them in good quality! ^^ You can see them below as well. I had my cellphone with me, so I took some pictures with it, too, but the quality isn’t near as good as I wish it was.

From that moment on, however, things have started to be only good and better. I explored a little bit and what surprised me were non-free public toilets. It wouldn’t surprise me at all in Czech Republic, where you can’t even breathe without paying, but paid public toilets in Japan were something new for me – it’s free just about everywhere!
The said reason for doing so was the need to biologically process the toilet waste, since it’s high on the mountain…but, whatever.
Also prices in kind of a small and overcrowded resting place/restaurant were insane. I believe it was ￥900 for small cup-noodles. You can normally get them for about ￥150 or so. So I decided to wait for my “breakfast” until I'm down in a city…

I finally managed to find zennie (my friend) and we settled for the descent at about 05:30 AM. And to our surprise, we found that 3-member Japanese group from before right near the torii gate leading to the path down! Which actually saved us a lot of time and possible boredom a few hours later.
The descent was harsh, I’d say even more difficult than the ascent. Why? Because when you climb up, you are slow and you have almost no problems such as slipping or falling. But, when you go down, you gain speed and unstability and since the surface of Fuji-san is like a very soft sand occasionally covered with round-shaped stones, you are prone to slide and fall immediately. Which resulted in one major problem – we realised that we cannot manage to reach the 5th Station before our bus leaves due to our very slow progress… But I’ll save this talk for later.

The scenery during our way down was as impressive as on the top. We were about 1 km above the clouds, but it looked like I could jump down there and I’d reach this white pillow in a few moments – I’d swear they were only about 100 meters below us. It looked like we were in heavens (…well, we were, actually) and are going down into magical clouds for salvation. Really, like in some video game or anime, kinda.
The amount of people climbing up hasn’t changed since our own climb, but yet another ridiculously long queue has been formed – the queue down. From the very top all the way to the 5th Station…
One thing I hadn’t expected at all was the intensity of sun itself. As I’ve already mentioned in Part 1, I’ve had no experience with mountains until now. And thus, I overlooked the fact, that we’d be above clouds, which means sun would shine directly on us and we’d be a lot closer to it than in cities. This resulted in almost unbelievably abrupt change of temperature. It rose from these cca minus 8°C to about +20°C in about an hour or two. So I changed from deep-freezed tuna into a grilled tuna. Unfortunately, quite literally… My face and arms were red as a tomato the next day and I felt quite sick for another few days.
At least I’ll be well-prepared for the next time… But it's said in a Japanese proverb, that "only idiots climb Fuji-san twice". ^^

Back to the bus problem. If we couldn’t manage to catch that bus, we’d have to wait several hours for another. And then many more hours in trains… But then again, the famous Japanese kindness showed itself and “Yeti"-san said there’s no problem in him giving us a lift (by car) to Mishima, where the bus was headed for. However, as we spoke about it from time to time, he agreed on giving us a lift all the way to Okazaki! More than 200 km from Fuji-san! And, for free!
Later, I’ve been told several times that it’s amazing even in Japan… Which means it’d be IMPOSSIBLE here in Czech Republic. They wouldn’t give us a lift even if they lived next-door here.
So, as we finally reached the 5th Station, we waited there for a while and took a bus to the 2nd Station, where public parking lot is located. The girl hopped on her Kawasaki bike (to our surprise she originally didn't come with the other two) and left first, while we got in the car, finally relaxed a bit and half-slept until we reached the Okazaki Station.
Thank you, guys!!

And that being said, our Fuji-san trip finally came to the end. It was great, interesting, funny and tiring experience which I'll never forget.


Photos:

Yeti-san freezing, everybody freezing

Desperate attempt of a happy smile... Or frozen grin should be more accurate.

Our "neighbours"

Frozen Japanese sitting under a postbox

He looked quite dead to us...

They had FOOD! And they were laughing eating it... We were so envious.

Very thick fog suddenly appeared out of nowhere

Waiting hikers

It was near this sign when I felt the coldest...

Moving to another hill... Still in this thick fog.

Fortunately, it was blown quite quickly by very strong (but very cold) wind

Fog...

Beginning of the sunrise... Next few photos without comments.

It was like a dream out there

Horizon in fire... Outstanding view.

There was a cloud just above the caldera

You'd feel like a god there... Believe me.

I like this picture...

Inside of the caldera

Snow in the middle of summer

No comments here...

Unfortunately, I can't read what's written on that stone

Sea of cloudy pillow

I'm not really sure what this structure was... Haven't gone there.

Next photos were taken from top of this hill

Beautiful shadow of Fuji-san along with the moon

Good morning, sunshine!

Notice the amazing triangular shadow of Fuji-san once again! ^^

Gate to Heavens (torii gate)

The 8th Station

The path was steep

Yet another gate to heavens...

The ridiculous queue once again

View up...

Fuji-san is amazingly crowded

Down to hell... Or paradise?

There are many weird colours on Fuji-san

The queue down

Nippon! Banzai!

A Station... I don't remember its number.

Another creepy one...

This was yet another queue, this time for buses... The front part of the queue.

The middle part of the queue...

The "end" of the queue... x_x

Videos:

The peak of the Fuji-san during sunrise. Wind was so strong I couldn't even hold my camera firmly. The noise is this video is the wind blowing mercilessly. Enjoy. ^^

Sunday, October 19, 2008