"A wise person hikes Fuji once...

...but the person who hikes Fuji more than once is a fool."

That old quote makes me feel like the wisest person that ever lived, seeing as we will NEVER again be tempted to climb Mt. Fuji!

The good news is that we made it to the summit and back down again and we're still alive; however, it was not exactly the magnificent experience we had hoped for!

Here was the original plan:
8pm - leave home and travel to Fuji
11pm - arrive and begin climbing, take breaks when necessary, but climb all through the night
4:30am - reach the summit in time for the sunrise, hike around the crater, eat a bowl of ramen and begin our decent
8am - return to the base of Fuji and drive home
12pm - back home in Yokosuka to see Elise and take a nap!!

Here's what actually happened:
8pm - Left home (Right on schedule; things were going great so far!! Elise was asleep and our friend Yuki was all ready to spend the night and take care of her until we got back. What a great trip!)
10:30pm - Arrived at Fuji, put on our hiking gear and got ready to hit the trail. (Everything is still going as planned and we are ready to go!)
11pm - We began hiking at Kawaguchi-ko Station 5 (Elevation: 7,700 ft.) and the stars are amazing. We never see stars back at Yokosuka, so that was very exciting! A light rain was falling, but we had seen that on the weather forecast and were expecting a slight drizzle through the night - our hopes were not too dampened....YET!
12pm - Still raining, but we were making pretty good time. Met up with other hikers who were also trying to summit by sunrise. We'd now purchased our Fuji walking stick and were stopping in at some of the huts along the way to get "stamps" branded onto the stick, a fun souvenir for all of our hard work and quite useful for the hike as well!
1am - Raining harder and getting windy so we stopped to add some clothing layers. We were still able to keep a pretty steady pace, but the hike was getting less and less "fun."
2am - Despite our rain gear, we were nearly soaked through. We stopped at a hut to get something warm to drink and sit for a bit, but found out they were going to charge Y5500 (about $50) each for us to stop there and if we only got food we had to eat outside in the pouring rain. We decided not to stop there and instead took a short break in a not-so-fresh bathroom because it only cost Y100 (about $1) to stop there and at least we had a moment's break from the weather.
3am - The rain continued to pick up and by now the wind was blowing so hard that gusts would occasionally stop us in our tracks. We came to another bathroom - this one was fairly new and smelled like cedar! - and we thought we should rest a bit, have a snack and see if the storm would blow over. At this point, Josh was chilled to the bone and needed to warm up as well. After about 20 minutes, we ventured up to the nearest hut and found out that they ONLY charged Y3000 for us to rest...so we made the rather difficult decision to officially stop, get a little sleep, and give our gear a few hours to dry out. We figured that at this point even if we did persevere and make it to the top, there probably would be no sign of the sun at sunrise anyway (Incidentally, all the other hikers that we had been crossing paths with throughout the night were stopped at the same hut as well - I guess everyone realized the same thing and decided to take a break from the elements)
4am - 5:30am - Sleep, glorious sleep! Josh said it was the best $60 he ever spent to sleep for an hour and a half in someone else's sleeping bag in a room filled with strangers. (If that gives you any idea for how miserable we had been earlier!)
6am - Put on all of our wet hiking gear and began the last 400 meter climb to the top. Sometime during our nap the rain stopped and the sun was just starting to show from behind the clouds.
7:30 - We reached the top of Mt. Fuji (Elevation: 12,388 ft) and though we desperately wanted to celebrate, the clouds quickly moved in and the wind started blowing so hard that we had to hold onto rocks or crouch to the ground to keep from getting blown away. We managed to climb from the station to the edge of the crater, but didn't stay too long because it seemed pretty dangerous. By the time we got down to the peak station again, everything was closed - the shelter, the little ramen shop, the post office (where you can send a postcard from the highest place in the world) and there was nowhere for shelter. We took a few pictures and thought it best to begin our decent as quickly as possible. Not exactly the exhilarating mountain top experience we had been hoping for!

8am - 11am - We hiked down switchback after switchback of loose lava and volcanic ash. Within 20 minutes after leaving the summit, the skies were bright blue and the sun was shining brightly (Great for the hike down, but it made us even more bummed that our "moments of glory" on the peak had been so dreadful.) Of course, this is Fuji and storms and clouds can come and go at a moment's notice but all in all it was a beautiful day and a much much better way to end our hiking adventure. When we returned to the 5th Station most of our clothing had dried and we were thankful to be all in one piece (with a few scrapes and some really sore muscles!)

So, all in all, we reached the peak of Mt. Fuji - the highest mountain in Japan - and even though it wasn't exactly what we had hoped, it certainly left us with stories to tell and an experience we won't soon forget!