Fujisan.....I must mount you!
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2009
1
15
39
Trip End
Nov 09, 2009
Kawaguchi,
Kanto,
Japan
Friday, April 10, 2009
I jumped up, shower free, and headed to Coco's to try and have a western breakfast....Mmmmmmmm......french toast.......bacon........and DENIED. Not open til 7am. Unacceptable.
So I walked back to the dump we were staying in and woke birnie for a minute. I was wide awake, had been on antibiotics for 1 day now, and was feeling energized
Makely victorious over Fuji-san
. Not to mention I didn't drink at all the night before. Bert's orders. It was the last day of our Seishun 18 Kippu, and we had to go somewhere to finish off our 5th day of use on this little gem. Mt. Fuji is close to tokyo, so our options that we had discussed the night before were either back to Tokyo, then a side trip to Fuji, or straight to Fuji for the weekend, then back to Tokyo. I was ready to roll and just wanted confirmation from birnie that our choice was Fuji. Groggily he said Fuji and in two shakes of a lamb's tail, my pack was on my back and I was shouting, "See you up there!" to a totally groggy and half asleep birnie. After all, it was 530am.
I headed to the train station and asked for a printout of the local train route and transfers from Kobe to Kawaguchiko station at the base of Mt. Fuji. Sweet, only 10 hours of travel and six transfers! I was on my way. Sooo....it is now about 630am and I am at Kobe Station. It's a friday, and I am taking local trains to get through Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto and every other major city within three hours of my start point. I am wearing two backpacks, one in front, one on my back - about 65lbs total - and the local trains are PACKED. When I say packed, packed in Japan (and also now in China) means take the most crowded trains in the US and amplify them by 10x.
It basically means that all space is occupied, including space above you and on top of you. So as I get on these trains, I am now carrying both packs and two smaller japanese gentleman on my back. Now a total of approximately 300lbs. And you can't even move. Want to raise your arm to scratch your neck??? Good luck with that. You are in a crowd induced straight jacket. And as much as it sucks, you can't do a single thing about it.
Not an easy climb
So for the first three hours I was miserable. And pissed. Had it not been wall to wall, floor to ceiling people, I would have started bucking my big ass around trying to create some space. I have become quite good at that when taking pictures at different crowded spots (especially in China), but this was different. Hahaha. Oh well, it sucked then, but as I write this entry from Ping'an, China, it now seems funny and I find myself laughing. All for a good story I guess :-)Unbenounced to me, Birnie had arisen from his baby crib about 15 minutes after I left, and had a change of heart. He now wanted to head to Tokyo first, to enjoy the weekend nightlife and catch a Giants game on Saturday, etc.... and he was in a mad dash to try and catch me.
The race was now on and Birnie was already cheating. He was hopping on trains that our seishun kippo wasn't eligible for and the goal was to catch me before the split to Fuji or Tokyo. He also was able to enjoy the exquisite experience of carrying japanese businessmen on his back for three hours. The beauty of it was that birnie had no transfers and had to endure the straight trip without 10,000 stops between Kobe and Kyoto - but even more people cuz he got off at the peak commuter time. At least I got a break with stops and a transfer in Osaka. Serves that bastard right though for trying to cheat in our race.
Makely is now Japanese in every pic.. peace!
So it thinned out after Kyoto and I was able to do some reading, listen to some tunes, and shed my backpacks. At about 1pm, I got off at a transfer point and had a little over an hour to kill. I headed up the platform to a little convenience store, bought some rice triangles (they are triangular clumps of rice, wrapped in seaweed and usually filled with salmon or tuna or something....very deelish!!) and got my snack on.I headed to the bathroom and when I returned........guess what?? Some tall gaijin with backpacks all over him was purchasing a rice triangle or two. He had tried furiously to catch me in time, but he failed. We nodded at one another, both knowing who the victor was, hahaha, and sat down to catch up on the traveling adventure we had both just experienced........or endured, perhaps a better descriptor.
The little devil he was, was trying to twist my arm to head to Tokyo to party for the weekend nights, but I stayed strong and had won the race (not to mention, the last thing I needed was party nights to delay my recovery from being sick for the past three weeks). Again, Dr. Bert's orders.
So we laughed for awhile and boarded our last couple of trains to Mt. Fuji. Upon arrival it really was breathtaking. The mountain, which is actually a volcano, was still snow capped and our hostel was right across the street from the train station
The after climb warning
. We checked in, at which time they only had one bed, so being the extremely self-less, giving, caring, considerate, handsome, funny, intelligent, athletic and well-traveled person that I am.......oh, wait, I forgot modest..(Jacqui, you aren't allowed to respond here hahaha), I gave the bed to birnie and volunteered to sleep on the floor of the dorm.A nice little hostel with free internet, a cafe, and most importantly, their own Onsen - which was roughly 120 degrees and left third-degree burns. After check in, birnie and I headed to the Onsen to once again sit in a tub naked together and rest our aching bones. Little did we know, there was actually a fee to use the Onsen, but as noted all throughout Japan, the pleasantly passive japanese hostel owner never said anything after they discovered us using it. So we continued to play dumb for the next two days and used it as often as possible.
It was a long day of travel and we hadn't got great sleep the night before in our baby cribs. We got dressed after our romantic onsen and headed out for some Indian Food. That's RIGHT!! A little Tikka Masala, some garlic naan, and a few Himalayans hit us right where we wanted.......in the wallet. hahaha.
So we headed back to do a little blogging/picture management and trip issue numero UNO arose. Birnie in his infinite wisdom got a little computer happy in Japanese and deleted all of our pictures up to that moment
Sexy time
. Yup.....you heard me right. He erased all of the Australian pictures and all of MY pictures up through most of Kyoto. We had been backing up our pictures and clearing room on our camera's memory cards, onto a USB flash drive that birnie had brought. Well, when he went to eject the card through the Windows explorer, he made his selection - which was of course in Japanese - and he guessed wrong!! Format, not eject is what he hit, and format was what it did. The first part of the format sequence is to clear all of the memory, and it worked perfectly. Birnie upon realizing his mistake, went Berserker Birnie, ripped the flash drive out, but was too late.
Next Mission.......climb Fuji in the morning and jump off!! hahaha, just kidding.
Even though it sucked, it wasn't a huge deal. Birnie still had a lot of pics on his two cameras, and most of the stuff that I lost wasn't too much to fret over. I had been to most places in Australia before and had previous pics, and a lot of the pics that were still on birnie's cameras were very similar to the ones I had just lost, so no biggie.
(But my first order of business was to get my own flash drive when I got back to Tokyo......hahaha)
Birnie felt awful, but there was nothing we could do about it, so we hit the rack and got ready to head up Fuji the following morning.
We had a good nights sleep, even though there were a group of Israeli kids in our dorm room that wanted to whisper all night (whisper meaning try to whisper, but yell in a softer tone), which for some reason was driving me nuts........but morning came quick and we were ready to give Fuji a shot
Very zen...
. You are not allowed to climb Mt. Fuji when it is snow-capped, but you can take a bus from Lake Kawaguchi to 5th Station which is about half way up the mountain. So that was our starting point.
It was a beautiful day, cool and sunny, so of course birnie and I dressed accordingly. Shorts, tee-shirts and sneakers. We hopped on the bus and it was about an hour ride to 5th station. We got out, looked around, snapped some photos and decided to go for a little hike.
We hopped the fence that said, "Do not pass this point! No summitting Fuji-san!!", and we were off!! I must tell the folks at home, that the shoes I brought to use as sneakers for the trip are actually Solomon water shoes. They have a full sole, but are actually mesh, so very breatheable, dry quickly and easy to keep clean. But, with all of those benefits, there is absolutely no protection from the cold, not to mention, blocking out snow or water.
At any rate, we were headed up the mountain and some cold feet weren't gonna stop me. Well.........as birnie and I began to summit this bad boy, the snow got deeper, and being knee deep in snow with shorts on and only a tee-shirt has its drawbacks. Nonetheless, we had a blast trying to climb for as long as we could. Birnie tried running up the mountain, got a nose-bleed, and thoroughly exhausted himself
Of course, i beat Makely in the bike race
. See the pics......classic. I got vertigo looking back down the hill, and could no longer feel my toes. Both of our shins were bleeding because when you break through the icy crust on each step, the ice shards lacerate your shins as you sink to knee-deep.We met a japanese couple who were also out hiking, with appropriate gear, and they were very quick to tell us that our gear was insufficient for this climb....Imagine that.......they had full gear including icepicks and walking poles, and birnie and I were bleeding from every oriface and shivering uncontrollably. Hahaha. The japanese couple had a good laugh though.
We snapped a ton of pics, posed with our shirts off, watched the crazy bugs that live on the ice crust (spiders and ladybugs) and headed back down to 5th station to catch our bus back to Kawiguchiko. We grabbed a couple of postcards, had a corn-on-the-cob and were headed home. Warming up was a beautiful thing. No frostbite to report.
When we got back to Kawaguchiko, we decided it may be worthwhile to rent a couple of bikes to cruise around the lake. It was about 3pm, and we were trying to decide how long to rent the bikes for. We decided on the rest of the day, and headed out to cruise the 20Ks or so around the lake. The bikes were awful and it was some good comedy riding these hogs past so many japanese tourists
Great shots in the morning
. See the video at the end of this blog entry and you will know what I am talking about. Birnie and I had a lot of laughs, took a ton of pictures and had a great time racing around the lake. The sakura was beautiful and with the backdrop of Fuji-san, this quickly became one of my favorite memories in all of Japan. It really was amazing.
Birnie had some doritos as a snack, so we figured a quick pic or two sent to Frito-lay make land us some loot to keep this trip going...........unfortunately, they have't gotten back to me yet.........weird.
After about an hour and a half, we decided that if we could race back to the little bike rental place, we could get a few dollars back for returning the bikes early, and only be charged for two hours instead of a full day. Well folks......the race was on. We had our little hogs pushed to the limit and we made it back with seconds to spare.
The shopkeeper was kind enough to return the equivalent of $4 US to us, and things were beginning to look up. I do believe that this was the moment I turned the corner and began to get healthy. I may have lost the battle previously.........losing hundreds of dollars in Hostess Bars and local scams, but getting $2 back for returning the bike early was winning the war!! WE WERE BACK BABY, WE WERE BACK!!!
More pretty shots of Fuji in the morning
!Sweating like a pig, and coughing so hard that I nearly fainted, I headed up to the onsen to get naked and soak my ailing bones. Nothing like sharing a nude bath with other men, to put the spring back into your step.
Birnie did the same and we headed out for some top-notch Chinese food. After all, we were heading to Beijing in a few days, and we thought it appropriate to acclimate our palates. A feast for 10 men, and a few beers later, we were headed back to the hostel to blog, send emails and hit the hay. It was an awesome day.
The next morning, we were going to head back to Tokyo for the Tokyo Giants baseball game at 2pm. I had trouble sleeping......the damn whispering Israelis.........so I slept in. Birnie got up early and headed out for some early morning pics of the lake and Mt. Fuji.
It is tough because there is so much haze in Japan, that even on a sunny day, visibility is shit. Yesterday morning, visibility was really good early, but we didn't take many pics around the lake. This morning, it wasn't quite as good, but Birnie was a champ and took about 1000 pics looking for a few good ones for our blog fans. I think he did quite well!
There were a ton of people out he said, everyone looking for that National Geographic Cover Shot, and birnie had a great morning taking pics with the rest of the Fuji-san tourists that were early risers
Narcoleptic Birnie
. Me on the otherhand.........sound asleep, enjoying the view of the back of my eyelids. Birnie got back, we packed our stuff, had some breakfast and headed to the bus station to make our return to Tokyo.Lake Kawaguchiko and Mt. Fuji were truly spectacular. If anyone comes to Japan and doensn't make it up here to see it in person, you are selling yourself short. It is a national treasure to the Japanese people, and once you are here, you will completely understand why.
It's truly amazing.
Well homies, this is it for Japan. Every entry should be complete and I hope everyone enjoyed sharing this with us. We sure as hell enjoyed sharing it with our family and friends. We have a ton more pics, so most of these are just a taste.
We are now working on China, and trust me when I say it is just as magical. So stay tuned, enjoy the entries as they come out, and don't be afraid to email us if you want to just say hey. We love seeing our inbox full with something other than spam.
We miss and love everyone, and ON TO CHINA!!!!
Makely and Birnie
Comments
WOW
Awsome pics and commentary!! I have now rated your blog second to Dancing with Stars as favorite things to do. You will probably move into to the #1 spot soon as DWS is coming to the season end. Aren't you excited???