Wait a sec, I have a barbeque rock in my shoe...

So after months of searching high and low for a glimpse of Fuji I finally got the view I have been dreaming of night and day for the past 26 years. Maybe an exaggeration. I had been so stoked at the thought of climbing Fuji, and this was mostly because despite all of my attepts at seeing it I have never managed to cop 1 single eyeful. I had been living my life in the depths of despair...but that was to end on Thursday night, or so I thought. Little did I know that would happen only after spending a total of about 12 hours ferreting up and then squirreling down the bitch of a mountain. Alon the way, staring out the window of the bus with my eyes concentrating on the mountains that may or may not have been Fuji (and my ears and nose concentrating on anything except the German guy hurling into a plastic bag). The bus then pulled over at a truck-stop sort of thing. It was time to get busy. Not. It was time for the German to ditch his spew bag although for reasons unknown he had grown attatched to the filthy chunder-bag and held onto it. Revolting. Then the bus stopped again and I'm thinking "it's not funny you fucking dirty man-whore, you stink, get rid of the spew" which he may or may not have done. I didn't notice as we prematurely (I thought) got off. We couldn't be there, surely. How could we be at Mt Fuji without me seeing it? Still no sight of Fuji despite being part way up. So off we went.


To cut a very long and hideously tedious story short, we got to the summit just before sunrise. Along the way we battled through many a bitter disappointment interspersed with heroics of which the world has never seen. These included only eating half a pack of tim-tams and managing to save the other half for the top of the mountain, only buying one giant kit-kat along the way, not having any tantrums, not stabbing any of the people carrying american flags (i love americans but come on, it's not the moon guys), and also not getting disembowelled by any mountain lions. Tops. It also didn't help that between the 7th, 8th and 9th stations on the map there are also 7.5 and 8.5 stations to tease you with as you climb up. Bastards.


As we got to the top the full-moon was lighting the summit and our little group of 4 had split into 2. Naomi I got there together and the elation you feel after climbing dust and boulders and pebbles for that long is amazing...until you realise you have to go back down.


I forgot to take my second-best friend Michelle, which is too bad cos there was a vending machine with American Coffee in it. She would have been delighted, as me and Carrie were.


We sat up the top for a while, watched the sunset (amazing), checked out the volcanic crater (cool), breathed the freezing/oxygenless air (sickening), and contemplating making a sled to get down without awakening my sleeping/dead ass muscles. The others ate some noodles while I tried to sleep-off the headache/nausea that started to get to me once we got to the top. After I gave up that idea, on the verge of a tantrum, I whinged enough to get the others to head off.

After hundreds of breaks, a billion rocks (exactly the same as the rocks my Dad puts in his barbeque - they must come from volcanoes) a couple of costume changes, my burning sunscreen/acid peel and the proceeding sunburn, a million descension techniques trialled and binned, no tim-tams, no kit-kats, no coke, no energy (even to have a tantrum), and a thousand various compliments to each other ("we are so amazing", "I'm so glad we did this together you guys", "your climbing outfit was really cute", and "we are sooooo outdoorsy now") we stumbled/fell/ran/squirrelled to the bottom. That's when we saw the fun-runners/idiots. There was actually a race up the mountain. As I write this, on Saturday I still don't have enough energy to describe how ridiculous an idea that is.


If I wrote a dictionary, and I probably will, Fuji will mean:

"Filthy, dirty mountain 2 hours from Tokyo, the climbing of which is highly stupid. Famous for it's snowy peak and the gorgeous panoramas of which it is the centrepeice. Suprisingly it is not as famous for its abundance of barbeque rocks. Looks better from the bottom than the top, and much better at both the top and bottom than in the middle."

Once we were at the bottom, finally looking up at Fuji-san, we that it is totally a crap idea to see it before you climb it. Not so much for the appreciation you will have for what you have overcome, but mainly just because if you see it first you will totally not even try. Unless you are a fun-runner. And I'm not.


So anyways, now we are outdoorsy.