Fuji-san

On Tuesday I crossed a Japan bucket list item off by climbing Mt. Fuji-san! Myself, my niece, a friend visiting from the US, and a friend and her husband from BSF here in Tokyo made the climb, and climb we did. Now, if you research climbing Mt. Fuji, most websites will tell you it is a tourist climb and you will see people of all ages on the climb - from grandmas to young children. From everything we read, it sounded very doable. And it is doable, if you are in good shape. All of us who climbed are pretty healthy. My friend from the US cycles and works out a lot. My friend and her husband who live in Tokyo run marathons, swim and cycle. I run and climb stairs. My niece dances every day for hours at a time. And all of us agreed it was HARD! And humbling. On the way up they asked me if it was harder than child birth and I said yes, because in child birth I get drugs to help numb the pain. There was no numbing my blisters and with every step down they hurt worse and worse. But it was worth it. The weather we had was perfect. In fact, a friend of mine from Okinawa went the very next day and got caught in a typhoon type storm and had to hike the entire way down in wind and rain. At one point on the way down I had tears in my eyes. I simply just wanted to get home and see my kids and husband. It was mentally exhausting, but so worth the effort. It is like running a marathon - the last 6 miles you think to yourself, "why am I doing this?" but when you cross the finish line you cry from the accomplishment of it all, amazed your body just ran 26.2 miles. After about a month of recovery you start to think about your next one. Now, there is a Japanese proverb that says something to the effect of "only a fool hikes Mt. Fuji twice." I do not think I will do it again, unless I take two days to do it. Doing it all in one day was a bit much, but it was all we had. We made it up in 4.5 hours and down in 3 with about 30 minutes up top to look around. I think if I did get talked into doing it again, I would hike during the day, spend the night in a mountain hut up top to watch the sunrise, and hike down the next day. I do not think I would hike it during the night. It was simply too hard of a hike. Enjoy the pictures. We did not see the sunrise but we did see a beautiful sunset at the end of the climb, a reminder of God's beautiful creation once again and his handprint all over the place.