Mount Fuji

Sunday comes around. We decide that we will actually climb Mount Fuji. Thinking that would be a good time to get ready, I pack my stuff, get some shoes, and meet up with Eri and Damo at Shinjuku Station.

A few hours later, we get to the Fifth Station of Mount Fuji. We thought we were unprepared. However, Brad and James, two guys who we met on the mountain, were less so. So we decide to invite them to come along with us on the hike and we lent them some shit.

To say it was excrucitating and exhausting would be a slight understatement. It was pictch black. And rocks did not make our ascent easy. And there were some places where we actually had to go on all fours lest we fall down the hill and die. But somehow, after six-hours-and-a-half of strenuous torture -including one break, however - we finally make it to the top.

The sun rose, its rays breaking through the clouds. It was beautiful and surreal. I felt like I was in a plane, but outside. We started going down the mountain, I with renewed energy, happy as can be. And then I took a break. And then continued again. And felt like I was going to die. Because when one goes up the mountain and feels like they are running out of energy, one can stop and go back. But when one has already climbed the mountain, one has to go back down, even if they have absolutely no energy to do it.

We get back to the Fifth Station at 8:00 in the morning, wondering what the hell we were doing still up to begin with. Facing a two-hour wait for which we were absolutely in no mood to do, we, in protest, paid 12,000 yen to a cabbie to take us to the train station, which we were going to do but instead decided that we may as well spend the weekend with our new friends made on the mountain and checked into a hostel and went to an onsen. Still not having slept, we went for lunch and then started to watch Kill Bill. When the others finally went to sleep, I decided it was high time to go for a two-hour bike ride. When everyoe woke up again, we went to a famous restaurant and had horse sashimi. That's right, horse sashimi. It was quite tough but tasted like bacon. With big ass servings of udon. It was so good. And then we got drunk and had the cheapest karaoke ever known to mankind.

It was such a fabulous weekend. I was only hoping to climb Mount Fuji, but the weekend ended up being so much more than that. It ended up being a mini-vacation, which is why I felt like ass when I returned home. Climbing Mount Fuji was one of the hardest things I have done in life, but also one of the biggest accomplishments.

I may just do it again.