Well I was recently out over there in Tokyo town, taking in all things Tokyo and around. But I thought I would focus in on one certain event which proved to be the most interesting, the most intriguing, that event being my challenge to MasTa Fuji that I could conquer him at any time of the year. Now - I consider myself an experienced hiker. I've never lived off of pine needles and grasshoppers for three months straight, but I know what I'm doing in the wilderness and know how to be prepared. MasTa Fuji was an enigma, though - it's supposed to be a 'gruelling' hike, but there's payphones at the top as well as a station to mail back postcards. How hard could it be? A well marked, albeit steep, path, with a few chilly winds here and there? A breeze. Easy stuff for your average hiker. I packed my stuff and headed out from my east Tokyo hotel room cross town to Shinjuku station to transfer onto the holiday train to Fuji-Yoshida, and then took a bus to Kawaguchico station where I could get the bus that takes me halfway up the mountain to the summit trail. All of this took much longer than I had bargained for, being six hours. So, instead of beginning my hike at a reasonable time of 10:00 or even 11:00 in the morning, I had to set out at the ripe old time of 12:00 noon, with the last bus leaving the station at 5:00pm - and the hike is supposed to take six hours. This is very vicious. Obviously, the holiday train bound for Fuji-Yoshida is not meant for serious hikers. Serious hikers, I suppose, are supposed to pitch their tent out in the parking lot overnight and begin the ascent at dawn. But actually, apparently, many hikers do the entire hike at night to reach the summit by dawn - surely this is only in hiking season, and not in may. The trail, though, was a foggy but simple affair for the first hour - I felt as though I should be herding yaks up the Tibetan plateau, except there were hiking teams all roped together carrying ski poles walking down the trail and saying hello to me. This should have been my first guess at something slightly ominous - but they saw my jacket, backpack, and gloves, and smiled. Ah well, there must be many of us doing the hike today, yes? After all, in the official hiking season, the trail probably gets several thousand visitors every day. Surely the population couldn't decrease so much in May, could it?





Of course, I should have remembered that last year around this time I hiked Allouette 'where-the-hell-am-i' Mountain in the eastern suburbs of Vancouver, and the only thing above the snow aside from me were the little tops of big tall trees. And that mountain wasn't even 2000 metres above sea level. MasTa Fuji, a much bigga brutha, summits at 3773 metres - considerably higher. But this didn't really click into my mind as anything different or more difficult - after all, Fuji is on the same latitude as L.A., so it would see less freezing cold because it's closer to the equator, right? Or perhaps not.



But I continued my hike, winding up a well-marked trail of volcanic ash, with a little bit of wind - enough wind for me to have my hood on. The trail, actually, was very easy at this point - you could mountain bike it without thinking twice. There are giant blocks planted all along the edges of the mountain to prevent erosion. The view was getting nicer, and the clouds were getting closer to my head. I wandered past some guesthouses, all closed, and then encountered something a little different - snow.



Snow, of course, isn't much to get excited about, but when it's a forty-five degree snowbank shooting up into the clouds it looks a bit intimidating. Luckily the wind wasn't too bad, and I could step in the footsteps of others before me without any worry - there were enough footsteps to easily see a path to the next guesthouse. I had to use my hands at certain times, because the snowbank was steep - but eventually I made it past this part of the trail. Well, that wasn't too bad. At the guesthouse I reached there was a signpost which said "peace be unto all nations" in four languages. And then it sort of dawned on me that I was no longer in Tibetan yak-hauling territory, but actually more in K2-like terrain, and the wind was getting a little harsh as well, blowing a little snow too. I got a nice picture of myself here, sitting on some rocks, with my hood strapped tightly around my head. Note that I forgot to bring pants which went zip-zip-zip-zip-zip, which in the end would prove to be a costly mistake. But let's continue:



After this guesthouse I couldn't find any real footprints, just little lumps in the snow. The snow on the surface was actually icy, a nice textured sheet. But I could see something up further, so I thought what the heck, I may as well go up further - from here I wasn't following anyone's path but my own, and now it really did look and feel like K2 - there was nothing but a blur of blowing snow in front of me, something black in the vertical distance ahead(did I mention that the ground hadn't levelled off? Just up, up, up), so I decided to continue further. Trail? Somewhere around here. I think it's buried under the snow. I had flashbacks of Alouette "where-the-hell-am-I" mountain, where I couldn't find the footsteps back and simply had to follow some hunches. But there wasn't any gale-force winds blasting dried snow bits at me on that mountain, and the terrain wasn't straight upwards all of the time. MasTa Fuji was getting vicious, and suddenly the movie K2 started playing through my head: with the brazen, womanizing macho man and the married, conservative scientist; one guy says "we can do it! Trust me, we can do it!", and the other guy says "Are you sure we're prepared for this?", and it was sort of good that my brain was still working properly, and I hadn't had any chills run through my body, although my feet had long ago become numb - but hey, that's the fun of hiking in snow.



But it took me awhile to accept the reality of the situation - I was clinging to the side of a snow-capped volcano 3500 metres above sea level with driving winds blasting snow at me and quickly making me another lump on the side of the mountain. And to top it all off, it -was- a cloudy day anyway, and the sunglasses really didn't help me see any better since I had to have my hood strapped so tightly around my head I couldn't look up but only downward; so with the last station before the summit in sight, the scientist said "You know what, Sean? You're not prepared for this. You were prepared for a steep hike with a bit of snow, but not an ascent up K2 in two and a half hours or less. And besides, the view looks pretty good from here, don't you think? How much better can it get 200 metres up? And you know what a crater looks like. Use that panoramic setting on your camera, get some pictures of yourself as the imbonimable Canadian Yeti, and slide back down to the bottom. This is a bit ridiculous."



And, well, I guess the scientist was right - although I've got some great pictures of me looking awful on the side of an active volcanoe in the middle of Japan, which has its own charm, don't you think? And it turns out that it only took 20 minutes for me to gain the feeling back into everything below my knees once I had left the snowline, so that wasn't too bad. I can handle not being able to feel my feet, having my gloves drenched through, and climbing snowbanks in soaked pants; what I can't handle is all of that and driving winds blasting snow at me like I'm Han Solo looking for Luke on Hoth. Except Han Solo had a big animal to gut and I didn't, I just had a sandwich I bought from the train station, a big bag of raisins, and a bunch of athletic drinks. But I didn't have Darth Vader hunting me down, but I did have the evil spirits of Shinto mocking my every step... oh, what am I getting at? Uh, it was difficult. The verdict, though: in the hiking season, July and August, the hike would be a breeze. But outside of that, it gets very difficult. Unmarked trails are always more difficult than marked trails, but unmarked trails buried below windswept snowbanks usually take the cake for amateur hiking. And besides, it's not like I'm covering new ground here: Fuji probably gets millions of summitters in July and August. Not too many in may, though. I can't stop but wonder why they don't build a big cable car that goes straight to the summit; I'm sure Japanese engineering could manufacture something of the sort which could withstand the erosion of the volcano and operate year round despite harsh weather conditions, to a beautiful impenetrible glass covered patio at the top. They could charge exorbitant prices, have little photo-op thingies which superimpose you and your family on top of the mountain, or going down it in a barrel, and a big Shinto shrine which houses a pachinko parlour. There's already a roller coaster and amusement park just beside the mountain, why not put it -on- the mountain and charge more money? It's not because the place is sacred and you can't build on it. Those Japanese make me wonder sometimes.



But in retrospect: You mess with MasTa Fuji, you mess with Shinto Entire. I don't recommend trying it any other time of the year except July and August, the official hiking seasons. MasTa Fuji isn't kind to those who go against his whim, so it only seems fair that if those of other belief systems take him on when he's not open for business, he won't take kindly to you. Take note of that.

Oh, and the Active Conditioning Water only helped marginally; Pocari Sweat and Beer Water weren't useful at all.


But anyways, on to the cities....(Warning! Long Load Time!)

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