Fuji-licious

My day started at 0500, aka the middle of the night! It was rainy and humid on my walk over to MWR (Morale, Welfare, & Recreation), but when I got to the bus the guide assured me the weather would get better throughout the day! We left Yokosuka base around 0530 to head to Mt Fuji for the day! My tour guides name was Midori (she wasn't sour though... She was spicy with all her Japanese jokes!) She got this name because she was born in June when everything is lush and green and Midori means green as well!

First stop, Japanese rest stop! It had a Starbucks and a huge outlet mall-- but it wasn't open yet! I got this great little pre-made Starbucks latte at the little family mart there and it was very tasty! There was a bus full of older Japanese gentleman and they all had canned Chuhai's while walking around the rest area... Keep in mind it was 0700! I sort of wanted to join their tour instead!

Next stop, Mt Fuji Peace Park! This park was opened in 1964-- same year as the Tokyo Summer Olympics! This peace park has been built with a prayer for the peace and happiness of Japan as well as World Peace. This peace park has 33 statues of the Goddesses of Mercy which are said to heal if you touch the statue where you have sickness. They were all very different and beautiful. There was a large bell at the park that the Buddhist monks ring on December 31st each year; they ring it 108 times as that is the number of earthly temptations we all must overcome to achieve nirvana. A beautiful white pagoda looks over the entire park and has statues of different buddhas on each side. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see Mt Fuji from here today.

Next stop was the Mt Fuji visitor center and an informational video on the mountain and it's history! Mt Fuji is a dormant volcano, it's last eruption was in 1707. Mt Fuji is 12,385 feet at the peak and is broken into "stations." The top is the 10th station and today we went up to the 5th... And I hiked to the 6th. You can climb Mt Fuji between July 1st and August 26th. It takes anywhere from 6-8 hours to the top and about 3-5 to get down. Altitude sickness is common so it is best to take your time and at this time of year it is less than freezing at the top! ***Fun fact alert: The first woman to climb Mt Fuji was in 1972 and she did it disguised as a man... Up until then it was believed the mountain was too sacred for women to climb.

Once we got to the 5th station at a little more than 7000 ft, the weather had really changed! The wind was blowing and it was cold enough for me to put on my hat and gloves... I even saw a few snowflakes! It was pretty cloudy and you couldn't see the mountain at all never-mind the peak! We were there for awhile so I started the hike towards the next station up...It wasn't long before I was sucking wind so I stopped at a nice rock and had some of my lunch I packed... PB & J!!!It was an amazing view from there and I could have sat there all day... But there was a mountain that was mocking me so I continued on up! I made it to the 6th station and it was beautiful and very cold... I was literally IN the clouds but I had to get going on the rest of the tour so I headed back down to get back on the bus. I considered this a "meet and greet" with the mountain before Damian and I conquer it next summer!

I passed many people on the trail and said a friendly "kon'nichiwa" to most... I did however get a very unexpected "buenos tardes" didn't see that one coming but for right now my Spanish is still better than my Japanese... At one point there was a group of Japanese tourists taking pictures of ME... The tour guide said my skin/eyes make me a celebrity! Awkward!!!! There's this beautiful mountain and landscapes and they take pictures of me... C'mon people!

Up next was the Fuji Sengen Jinja shrine, one of the largest forest shrines in all of Japan! From there you could see Mt Fuji and there is a trail to hike to the summit from here. This shrine has a goddess of fire for which at the end of each summer they have a fire festival for. This goddess had to give birth into the fire to prove her faithfulness to her husband... A little extreme, no?!?! The gate of this shrine is now made out of wood... It used to be made out of steel but Japan needed the steel during World War II so they took it down. The Japanese symbol for a shrine is a backwards swastika... It means happiness in Japanese. These symbols are located on many statues around the shrine as well as the symbol on a map to show where there is a shrine.


Oshino Eight Ponds was our last stop of the day before heading back to base. It takes 80 years for water from Mt Fuji to get from the top and filter through all the way down to these eight ponds. This water is considered the purest!Each of the eight ponds has a different name and there is one pond called "sake bottle pond..." the legend of this pond is that many years ago there was a wedding and during the wedding the bride "did gas" (that's how Midori told it) and the bride was so embarrassed that she ran away with a sake bottle and jumped into the pond and committed suicide... Supposedly, sometimes you can see her wooden clogs floating in this pond! I LOVE Japanese legends like this!

After this it was a long drive back to base... With a quick stop for some dinner.... Which i didn't have because everything had meat/fish in it... Hope this blog isn't too choppy, I wrote it throughout the day on the bus on my iPhone so I wouldn't forget anything! We got back to base around 2200 because there was tons of traffic from an accident and my tour leaves tomorrow AM at 0400... Guess I'll be sleeping on the bus tomorrow!

Japanese word of the day:
Taiyo: Sun