On the Road to Fuji

I packed my backpack the night before and rushed to the station to make sure to catch the bus on time. I was eager to climb and ready to rush up Mt Fuji before I even stepped on the bus. The bus, however, took 8 hours to reach the mountain. It was an O.K. bus though.
This is a scenery pic from one of our rest stops on the way to the mountain.
This is a scenery pic from inside the bus which I'm posting mostly for the purpose of embarrassing those who were able to fall asleep on the ride over (I was not among them, unfortunately).
I actually took this picture on the way to Fukui from the Tokyo orientation a few weeks ago. That is Mt Fuji in the background.

Most people seem to say the same thing after climbing Fuji, "That was a beautiful, but I'm never going to do it again." You see, as popular as it is with tourists, Fuji is a surprisingly arduous climb. Never mind the packs of battle-hardened elderly women who climb it, for young and old alike it is a mighty difficult task. Many in our group said that this trip left them more exhausted than anything else they've experienced.

The inevitable question after reaching the peak in a state of near physical collapse is, "was it worth it all?" I imagine it must be a bit like childbirth. Extreme exhaustion and pain followed by one of life's most beautiful moments. Is it worth it?
Probably not, but people keep doing it anyway.

Mountain Vending

The climb up Mt Fuji includes 9 steps before reaching the peak. At each step is a station with food and drink for sale. There's also a hotel and a first aid center at one step. Most people begin at the Fifth Station since that's where the bus parking is located. From step 5 it can take anywhere from 5-8 hours on average to reach the peak depending on your pace and congestion near the top.
Here's an example of a typical station menu in English. Prices are probably more than double what is typical because it's no easy task to bring these items up the mountain. Yes, that last item is oxygen. Cans of oxygen are available to help tourists deal with the thinning atmosphere.
This vending machine is more than 3,700 meters (12,140 ft) above sea level. Those are clouds in the background.

Fuji Sunrise

Most people climb Fuji at night in hopes of viewing the sunrise from the peak. The crowd is so large, however, that many people who would have otherwise reached the peak by sunrise are backed up somewhere between the last station and their goal when the sun comes out.
All of these photographs were taken in between the last station and the peak.
The group broke up into pairs, trios and small packs of climbing partners before we began the trail. Many people, however, reached the top with someone other than their original climbing partner. I started out with two climbing partners and ended up spending most of the trail with someone else whom I bumped into along the way as my pace veered from the others.
Shortly after my new climbing partner and I began hiking together we decided to pass the time playing a game. Since the game was the road trip classic "let's see who can keep silent the longest" most of my hike was really quiet. It started as a simple children's game, but the competitive drive soon overtook us and other hikers from the group began to wonder if we were out on some Fuji religious experience that demanded a vow of silence.
Actually, though, having once spent a week on a silent religious retreat, I can vouch for the worthiness of silence, especially when in awe of nature. It's also fun to see what gestures people come up with for such things as, "so, am I really stuck with you for the rest of this hike?", "how far to the peak?" and "I think I'd like to buy a hiking stick at the next station."

While resting at one station I overhead another pair of hikers from our group admiring the constellations. One of them really knew what he was talking about and began pointing out various groupings of stars and their modern day use in company logos and designs throughout East Asia. Then, my climbing partner took a notepad out of her bag and wrote down what would be our first completely understood sentence since the beginning of the silence,

"I have gas from the french fries"

富士山

This is the entrance to the Shinto shrine atop Mt Fuji. The path between the last station and the shrine is packed worse than the lineup of 14 year old girls outside of an N'Sync concert. By the way, Amber, Lance Bass is still gay.
This stone marks the name of the shrine. Really the only characters I recognized were 富士山 (Mt Fuji)
As I climbed up the mountain gradually losing any shred of energy, I just kept telling myself, "I've been higher than this before - much higher! This should not be such a rough climb." But, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself of how easy Fuji should be, it just kept getting harder and harder to press upward. By the time I reached the peak it had been nearly 24 hours since I had last slept and I had been ready to pass out in exhaustion several hours before that. Yet, somehow, breaking off the trail and taking a look back over the clouds rejuvinated me. I felt as if a cool breeze had granted me new lungs. This would all fall apart on the descent, of course, but for a brief moment the spirit of the same mountain that killed my physical resolve restored my life.
Another surprise to tear apart the "I've been higher" mantra was the fact that I had never seen a view like this before. On the Peru blog I have pictures of mountain scenery far beyond this altitude yet nothing of this magnitude. The Andes moutain pictures are mountains surrounded by other mountains, but Fuji is an island in the clouds. You beat your body for 6 hours to reach a peak surround by hundreds of other climbers only to look out at the expanse of the sunrise and realize suddenly that the whole climb has been between the mountain and you alone.

When You Come Back Down

Those who make it to the top of Fuji take a different route down. Although faster than the climb, it is more difficult due to stress on the knees and the gravel and dust. By the time we reached our bus at station 5 our faces were so dirty some of us were somewhat hard to recognize.

By the way, in case if you were wondering, this is what the inside of a cloud looks like.

3,776 Meters (12,389 Ft) Later

A view of the top from the top.
Looking down on the hundreds of wandering souls seeking the peak.
One of the last stations before the dash to the peak. This photograph was taken on the way down.

The Pure Land

"Dharmakara knew that most human beings were incapable of completing the necessary religious practice, meditations, and virtues to attain Buddhahood through their own effort. He therefore conceived of a plan to build his own ideal Buddha-land- a blissful paradise in life and death that would be open to all sentient beings...

So determined was he to build this perfect Buddha-land that he sat in meditation for five aeons...At the end of five aeons, he had completely visualized his Buddha-land in every detail. He named it "The Pure Land."

He declared - that he would not accept Enlightenment for himself until he was assured that his Name would be heard forever by all beings in all corners of the universe. He further declared - that he would not become a Buddha himself until he was assured that all his effort, aspirations, virtues, wisdom and compassion would be instantly transferred to all sentient beings as soon as they heard and voiced his Name, "Namo Amida Butsu" with a sincere heart.

Dharmakara then devoted himself for innumerable aeons to bring his Pure Land into being. His land was wide, expansive, and incomprehensively unique."


(text taken from the Toronto Shin Buddhist Dojo website.)

武生盆踊り：Takefu Bon Odori

As you can see here, the streets of Takefu were packed with people in various forms of traditional clothing. Every group had their own dance, and the traditional obon music was performed by a live band. They pretty much performed the same song (or at least it seemed like the same song) on a loop for 2 hours, but changed the tempo several times forcing the dancers to adjust accordingly. As we marched and spun our way through Takefu many local people stopped to laugh and admire the foreigners who were desperately trying to learn the dance as they went along. A few people even came over and took photographs with us in between songs.
It was well into the night by the time we finished dancing and the pools of sweat on our outfits were testament to our collective über-fatigue. The half a dozen of us who braved the ancient wood nymph dance were lucky enough to receive some nice Japanese style umbrellas after the parade.
The cat bus from Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro (隣のととろ） gave children rides during the parade.
Some of the other ALTs (Assistant Language Teacher) taking a break under the red lanterns. I like red lanterns. Very classical mood.

三国花火：Mikuni Fireworks

The fireworks display at Mikuni beach is easily the best I've ever seen. Fireworks shoot directly off the water.
I've posted a couple videos of the fireworks on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSNg-xjLbrQ&mode=user&search=
Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib5cyadHmyg&mode=user&search=

フェニックス祭: Phoenix Festival

The city of Fukui has seen its share of tragedy in the past century. Bombing from American warplanes ruined the landscape during WWII, a devastating earthquake years later brought more destruction and just a few years ago heavy flooding damaged property along the river that runs through town. Thus, rather than move far far away as most human beings would, Fukui residents have adopted the Phoenix as their symbol and hold a city festival every year to celebrate everything that has been rebuilt from ash and rubble.


The phoenix, as a symbol of rebirth, even appears on manhole covers throughout Fukui. Oddly enough, I've found that Japan has some very nice manhole covers. For example, in Nagoya they often portray Nagoya castle. This contrasts drastically with the cover a few friends and I found in Kentucky once labeled, "Grease Trap: Hoe of KY". Those are my toes, by the way, and I took the photograph using the 3.2 mega pixel camera in my cell phone and subsequently emailed the picture to myself. And that was a pretty standard phone. *Ahem* I like Japan.

Anyway, the festival is really quite nice. There's all sorts of fried octopus and noodles and fruit stands about the main strip of town (aptly named after the phoenix), and all throughout the weekend various groups perform dances and beauty contests and such.
Lots of folks come to the festival in traditional Japanese garb.

And not all of them are foreign tourists.

帰：Return

Here you have a map of Japan with my current base of operations highlighted in red. I will be living in the city of Fukui in the prefecture of Fukui for at least the next year as an English teaching assistant in a technical high school. My limit is 3 years with the JET Programme (Language teaching assistant hunting organization), but I really have no idea how long I will end up in Japan. Some people give up before boarding the plane, others stay several years and some even settle down, marry and never leave.

This is the view from my one bedroom apartment. The bedroom doubles as an entertainment room, the kitchen doubles as a welcome room and the bathroom is really more of a small closet than an actual room. On a clear day you can see the trees on the mountains from my back window.

I came to Fukui with a group of about 20 new ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers). Surprisingly enough, I am one of only 3 or 4 people in the group that speaks Japanese and has lived in Japan previously. This, apparently, makes me actually useful at times. An example from a trip yesterday to the beach:

Two girls approach a surfer from South Africa (not a joke, we have a surfer from South Africa in the group) and start speaking in Japanese, "Hello, what country are you from?"
...he replies with a blank stare
I glide over, "he's from South Africa"
"Africa?! You're both from Africa?"
...blank stare
"no, just him. I'm from the states"
"you speak English in South Africa?"
..."uh, yes? English."
The rest of the conversation pivoted around my ability to translate back and forth between the young women and the guy with whom they really wanted to speak. Sure, they'd rather only speak with the cute long-haired foreigner, but without the nerd associate all they'd have for conversation is blank stares.


It's good to be back.