Hey everyone! I hope all the 4th of July festivities went well stateside! Nothing really happened here, I just went to work, and then hung out with a bunch of friends afterwards.
This past weekend, though, I went with a german guy from the lab and some of his friends and we did a sunrise hike of Mt Fuji! It was a lot of fun, we started at around 8:30 and got up to the top at 2:30, with sunrise scheduled to be at 4:30. The hike itself wasn`t too bad; I had heard that the trail quality was awful, but it was actually very well maintained, albeit a little steep and dangerous at times. There were regular huts along the trails, each selling drinks and food, which were of course overpriced. That was the one negative to the trip. I expected to be able to fill my waterbottles, but a liter of water cost $8 at the bottom, and over $10 on the mountain(ridiculous!). So of course, being my selectively stingy self, I bought a liter at the bottom, and then tried to make it last the whole way up and down (it didn`t), and was therefore a little dehydrated by the end of the hike.
Each station also had a generator for electric lights (which didn`t really seem that green). It was cool to look up and down the mountain and see the periodic patch of light to see how far you were and how much was left. When you weren`t near a station, though, you could actually see the stars, which is something I`ve never seen in Japan. Having always been in the city surrounded by lights, seeing ALL the stars crisp and clear like at home was really amazing. We tried to take some pictures, but without a tripod they were all too blurry.
When we got to the top, it was absolutely freezing (I didn`t bring very many warm clothes to Japan because it`s summer and the weather is pretty consistently 90 and humid). I was wearing every article of warm clothing I had, and a rain poncho for the wind. It wasn`t so cold, though, that I wasn`t still able to lean up against a wall and pass out for an hour. I didn`t get altitude sickness like some of the other people, but I did get out of breath and fatigued much more quickly than I was used to as we got closer to the top, so by the time we got there, I just wanted to sleep.
Once sunrise started, the rim of the crater was covered in people, and it was really really impressive. The sea of clouds below, watching as the golden light started to creep along the slopes of the mountain. I was one of the first things in the world to be touched by the sun on July 3! Then all the japanese people started shouting `Bonzai!` and throwing up their hands to the sun, it was really cool. After the sun was up, we walked around the edge of the crater, saw the shadow that fuji cast across Japan, took pictures, and then started back down. I also saw someone propose on one of the more secluded edges of the crater. A big group of people had hiked up together, and then this Japanese guy went and proposed, and she said yes, and then he yelled something really happy in Japanese. All in all, it was a really powerful experience, one I`ll probably have to do again someday, and definitely one worth doing if you`re ever in the Tokyo area! I`ll be uploading pictures to facebook, I`ll post the public link here once the album is made.
Hope everything is going well for everyone!
Cheers,
Thomas
Here's the link to the facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150674955895538.693869.823245537&l=73f07abe53
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