July 26-30, Mishima, Fujisan, Hakone, Numazu

As early as we could muster on saturday morning we worked our way to the Shinakansen (bullet train) station. However due to some miscommunication over which tickets we needed in order to board the train, and some rather unsuccessful arguing, we forked out around 30000yen ($300) for both of us to take the three hour train ride. But three hours and several hundred kilometres later, we arrived, still anxiously awaiting our first glimpse of the mountain we hoped to conquer the next day. However, the haze was in the air due to humidity and intense heat, so the enigmatic mountain was nowhere to be seen. Jon and Yuzu picked us up from the train station, prepared to feed and house us for the upcoming several days. Jon and Yuzu were fellow alumni from the vis.arts program at the UofR, and we had all spent many occasions back in the good ol' days having good times and chatting about art. Jon and Yuzu have been together for many years, and they were living with Yuzu's parents. We pulled up in front of a beautiful yellow house, and not even an hour later, we were being dressed up in Yukata to go to the summer festival in Numazu. We hopped on a bus and headed out to Numazu to meet up with some of Jon and Yuzu's friends. Numazu was packed with people, though not as many as the night before in Osaka, so it was a nice comfortable level. Even though we were dressed in what we felt to be as little as a bathrobe, it was still hot, but the air was filled with smells not too distant with the local fair in Canada, just with more octopus. Loud drums and a parade created the atmosphere of intense celebration. I dabbled in some octopus balls (delicious pastry/octopus/i-don't-know-what snacks) which are a delicacy usually limited to festivals. We enjoyed the fireworks for a little while, but soon headed back to Mishima to prepare for our climb to Fuji, as we were planning on leaving at 3:30am in order to be hiking by 5:30, as Fuji is a long hike, and we hoped to miss the cold and dangerous nightfall.


3:30am comes round. We rouse our selves from bed and grudgingly pack up the Jeep and head on our way to climb the mountain. Little was I to know how much I would be suffering by midday. Fuji is a mountain that is 3775m (12.366 feet), a height which takes well over fifteen minutes of ascending in an airplane to reach. We drove up to around 2400m as a starting point, and even at that height, you can look downwards on most of the clouds. It was a good day for climbing, sunny and cloudy, a beautiful temperature compared to the intense heat we'd been experience in the previous week. The first 500m went by very quickly, taking around 4 hours reach the various reststops along the way. Fuji is an active volcano, and the most recent eruption, though well over a hundred years ago, was still apparent on the sides, a desolate landscape with the odd strange looking yellow flower here and there that grew in amongst the lava rocks that was our path up. The clouds were stunning, we watched them form and smash into the side of the mountain, causing the temperature to drop 10 degrees in just a few seconds. However, around 3100m or so, I started feeling kinda funny. My pack went from 50lbs to 500, in a very short distance i was so exhausted that I was starting to feel very dizzy. I thought, I just have to sit down, I'll be fine. To no avail, instead of feeling better, I started feeling worse, MUCH worse. My head started to hurt and nausea was creeping over me like a dark shadow. At this moment I had the panicky thoughts of, Omigod, I'm easily four hours from medical help, shy of a helicopter rescue, which is not something I'd like to experience from the receiving end. It is absolutely terrifying to be sick on the side of a mountain with no idea what's wrong and what to do about it. So at 3200m, we turned back. I felt really bad, as I was the only one in the group to be struck with this strange illness. After another hour of hiking downwards, with many impromptu rest stops (volcanic rock is not comfortable to lay down on), I was feeling worse and worse. A hiker ahead of me who was on her way down was vomiting, and I was glad I hadn't progressed that far. A Canadian couple who was returning from the top saw me suffering and asked if I was okay. A short discussion concluded that I had altitude sickness, and that I should try some of their canned oxygen. I felt better right away, not cured, but better. I find it a nice comforting thought that the Good Samaritans that stopped to help us were Canadians, and I'm not surprised. Eventually we found a reststop that sold oxygen (at over $15/can) and I sat down for a therapeutic fifteen minutes, feeling no trace of the sickness that I had felt for the previous two hours. But we were already too far down to go back up, as it would have been another nearly 2-3 hours from the point where we'd turned back to reach the top. So our battle with Fuji was over, and I got my ass kicked. Next time, I guess.

Needless to say, we slept well that night after nothing short of a feast at Yuzu's parents' house. Our destination the following day would be to a beach not too distant with an excellent place to go snorkeling. Neither Kat nor I had ever tried snorkeling before, so we were excited. It was unbelievable how easy it was, and the amazing fish that you could see from less than 100 yards from the shore. Although Yuzu took a lot of photos, most of the ones I took with their waterproof camera turned out really bad, so you'll just have to imagine. We saw Moray Eels, Sea Urchins, Jellyfish, iridescent blue and yellow fish, butterfly fish, starfish, Box Pufferfish, etc. It was very exciting and inspires me to try the same thing in Korea. Mt. Fuji was visible from the beach we were at, and we could finally get some perspective of its size and height, considering that we were nearly 100kms away, it still towered in the distance.

The day was supplemented with some delicious Tempura and Sashimi at a local restaurant, a visit to an Onsen(a gorgeous public bath from natural hot springs), and a barbecue that evening with enough food to feed a village, thanks again to Yuzu and her mother. The next day was a slow trek to Hakone park, filled with temples and beautiful landscapes. One Koi pond looked like it was writhing from all these massive fish. That night would be the last, so we went and got drunk at the Okinawa restaurant, eating sea grapes and other fancy dishes. I even tried jamming on a Japanese styled string instrument that reminded me of a banjo, except it used snakeskin as the drum instead of canvas. All in all, an incredible experience and an unforgettable one, a chance to go and stay with a Japanese family and people who actually know what there is to do and see that's a little off the touristy path. After a glorious exchange of gifts, emotional goodbyes and quick posing for pictures with Geisha, we hopped on a train to head back into Tokyo, one day before my parents were to arrive.