Pictures from Japan - Part 3

Mt. Fuji, here we come! This article is the third of a five-part photoblog series.

I met up with Tom of JAPANEXILE fame and we took the late bus from Tokyo to the 5th station of Mt. Fuji. There, we also met another friend. Fuji is divided into 10 stations, with the 10th being the top. Busses go to the 5th, so that's where most climbs start. We began the climb at around 10:00 or 11:00 pm. I reached the top sometime around 3:00am. Sunrise was around 4:00 and we started climbing down around 5:00, reaching the bottom around 10:00. Yes, you read that right: we made an all-nighter out of it. Okay, let's get to the photos!

You can get a large, high-resolution version of any photo by clicking on it.

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Tom and I at the shop at the 5th station. At this shop, you can sell your soul for an onigiri riceball meal. You can hawk a lung for a bottle of water. In exchange for your firstborn child, they'll give you a flashlight or headlamp (batteries extra). Your left arm will get you a walking stick. Fortunately with my glowing face I didn't need a flashlight or headlamp, so I'll get to keep my firstborn.

An hour or two later, we're sitting at the seventh station. All throughout the climb, we're making friends with the natives. If you decide to climb Fuji and you know no other Japanese, learn this phrase: "Gambatte!" It means something like "Good luck" or "Do your best", but it doesn't really translate well into English. Notice how Tom has no left arm? He traded it at the 5th station shop for a walking stick. Same with the young lady on the right. (Facebook comment from David: "Love the water bottle.. :P")

When you reach about the three-quarter way mark, the occasional torii gate starts showing up, offering hope to weary climbers. The higher the gate, the more coins are scattered on the ground, offered to the gods for strength. I theorize that if Fuji were as tall as Mt. Everest, the Japanese people would just withdraw their whole life savings and fling them at the gates.

Here's that same gate up closer. It feels so good passing through these gates. I just pity the Buddhist monk who had to build the things.

Just for good measure, another torii gate. See the guy in the foreground, with the white hat? Just above the white hat, you can see a grayish oval in the mountainside. It's hard to make out, but that's actually a human skull, the last remains of a less skillful climber.

Various companies sponsor climbers, kind of like Nascar. The gentleman up ahead, here, was sponsored by Adidas. That means Adidas gave up a firstborn child for him so he could get a flashlight at the 5th station shop. Me? I was sponsored by Google. My backpack had these little contextual ad banners on it and they changed based on where I was on the mountain.

I'm not sure which station this was, but it's evidently around 3,250 meters. You can tell it's starting to get cold, because I'm wearing my cheap $10 throwaway jacket which I bought just for Fuji. Judging by the model behind me, we can infer that the top of Mt. Fuji is a giant, perfectly flat circle.

This is at the 10th station, where I met up with another pair of friends. They rushed up the mountain and got to the top around 1am, which means they were freezing their butts off for a long time. The 10th station isn't quite at the mountaintop, but it's 5 minutes away.

This is the top of Mt. Fuji. Behind us, an ancient torii gate crumbles and leans at an angle, thousands of yen in coins pushed between the grains of the wood. That donation box behind me was full of very generous donations, as big as 1000 yen ($10US) bills.

And this is a smaller miniature torii, just behind the last one. In this picture you can more clearly make out the coins literally pushed into the woodgrain.

In this picture, the sun is just beginning to come up. It sure was a relief when Tom managed to grow a new left arm. We were all pretty tired and cold at this point, but the excitement was palpable as the fiery star of heaven began to come aloft.













Sunrise. The Japanese expression for sunrise is "hi no de", where "de" is the stem of the verb "deru". That literally means something like "the coming out of the day".


Enjoying the sun's mercifully warming rays. I could've really gone for a cup of coffee right about this point. Too bad coffee at the 10th station costs a lifetime of indentured servitude.




The overall mood is one of excitement.

Looking down at the 10th station from the mountaintop. You might wonder how the shop there gets its supplies. Well, at the base of the mountain they have a gigantic slingshot...

I wanted to go rolling down the mountainside like we used to do down grassy hills when we were kids. My friends had to hold me back.


Fuji is, of course, an inactive volcano. And that means it has a crater. This is where the virgin sacrifices were performed before the Landmark Tower (from part 2) was created. Toward sunrise, we were so cold we were hoping for an unforecast volcanic eruption.

Conquerors of Mt. Fuji. Ten minutes after this picture was taken, that torii gate behind us finally collapsed under its own weight.

The climb down was a whole other adventure. I don't remember much about it though: psychological defense mechanisms, and all.

Back at the 5th station. Victorious. Elated. Exhausted. Time to take a bullet train to the next destination, Kyoto, and pass out for awhile. ...Yeah right. I'm the Glowing Face Man. I couldn't escape adventure if I tried!

ENGRISH

In the first, third, and fifth installations of the series, I'll showcase some nice examples of Engrish, the dialect of English spoken in Japan. The second one is borrowed from a friend's camera.

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Next stop: Kyoto, the land of temples and geisha. ...and monkeys, as we'll soon see.

This article is part 3 of a 5-part series. Here's the entire series:
Pictures From Japan - Part 1
Pictures From Japan - Part 2
Pictures From Japan - Part 3
Pictures From Japan - Part 4
Pictures From Japan - Part 5