Fuji san!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kia ora whanau.. well its been 2 weeks or so now that we have been back in good old Nihon and have started settling back into life here.. But last friday we embarked on a trip that we have wanted to do for awhile and was on our list of things to do in Japan and that was CLIMB MT FUJI!!!!!.... So on friday after school we headed to Shizuoka to stay the night with our mate Hinekura who is also a JET who lives in shizuoka which is close to fuji.. So we meet her at the station and went out to dinner with her teacher and work mate... we ended up getting on the juice and her teacher got hammered.. i mean really cabbage.. ater dinner we headed to sing some karaoke at which this point her teacher got so cabbage that she ended up just saying random things all night.. lets just say this is the most cabbage i have seen a Japanese teacher ever... damn talk about a crack up.. pure Cabbage!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next day we chilled and got ourselves ready for the mean hike up the Maunga Tapu that is Fuji..we were both abit nervous and anxious about making the climb not knowing what to expect... Our plan was to get to the mountain at about 6pm then walk up the mountain all night and see the sunrise then come back down...

We caught the bus from shizuoka station to Fujinomiya 5th station which is half way up Mt fuji.. we arrived here at 6pm..It was abit cold when we arrived and we started trooping up the mountian.. At first the climb was not so bad as we reached the 6th station, but as we carried on it began to get harder and we needed to take more breaks to help counter getting altitude sickness.. As we got to the second 7th station it began getting pitch black dark so we had to use our headlamps which were life savings as we were climbing up in the dark...During some of our breaks in the dark we would turn our lights off and look up into the stars and around us and appreciate the serene quietness that we felt while having a break.. it was like we were the only people on the mountain.. this was one of highlights of the climb for both of us...

we struggled up the mountain for another couple of hours finally reaching the last station before the summit at about 11pm.. we were very early before the sunrise was to come up.. so we went inside the hut to see if they had any beds for us to rest at before making our last push for the summit.. luckily they had a few beds because it had began to rain and it wouldnt have been fun waiting for 3 hours in the rain..so after getting out of our wet clothes, we managed to get warm and get a couple hours sleep.. at 2:30am we woke to make the last push to the summit..we left the hut at 3am towards the summit.. it seemed really hard the last push to the summit as well as there were a few people now on the final path to the top... BUT we finally reached the top at about 4:30am... we had conquered the mountain!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were on the top of MT FUJI!!!!!!!!!... as we walked around the weather was starting to get really cold, it was still dark and the sunrise had not come up yet...we decided to wait for another half hour... luckily the sunrise came up.. although there was abit of cloud hanging around the mountain, it finally cleared for a while for us to see the beautiful Sunrise on top of MT FJUI... what a beautiful moment... after this we decided time to get off the mountain as we were freezing our balls off!!!!
the walk down from the top was beautiful as we took our time and enjoyed the beautiful sunrise over Mt fuji...

coming down was abit of a mish as fatigue was starting to affect us as we were slipping all over the place on the loose terrain and gravel... after 3 or so hours we finally reached the bottom.. the sense of accomplishment and relief of making it safe off the mountain was huge.. we were absolutely buggered..just shattered after the huge task of climbing up and down Mt fuji... this was an awesome experience that we both wont forget...

After this we headed back to shizuoka to catch our train.. we had a few hours with Hinekura and Max..had abit of ramen plus a few beers.. gee the beers hadnt tasted so sweet after that... thanks so much to Hinekura and Max for looking after us.. we look forward to having you fullas down here in shiga anytime..
well whanau thats it...As a famous Japanese proverb says" ONLY A WISE MAN CLIMBS MT FUJI ONCE AND ONLY A FOOL CLIMBS IT MANY TIMES" well i dont mind being a wise man on this one.. It was a mean Hikoi and i will remember it for a long time......

PAORA AND CHANEL