FUCK IT'S COLD

I just had the most miserable 17 hours of my life. Okay, maybe "just" is wrong, since it was about 24 hours ago that the misery actually stopped, but given the fact that I've been sleeping for over 16 of those past 24 hours, and my body is so sore I can barely even walk (I grimace every time I go down and up stairs) the misery feels like wasn't that long ago.

In short, I climbed Mount Fuji this weekend, while y'all were having a blast at Otakon. It was pure punishment, except for those few seconds when　I was at the summit marveling at the sunrise, and even those few moments I was huddled in four layers of clothing trying not to get blown over by the wind, my teeth chattering like hell.

FUCK. OW. is all I have to say after Fuji.

Some dumb Japanese guy once said something like, "A wise man climbs Fuji once. A fool climbs Fuji twice." He's dead fucking wrong. It's more like: a fool climbs Fuji once, somebody batshit insane climbs Fuji twice, and a wise man stays far away and takes pretty pictures.

Lindy, Ari, and I set out from Shinjuku and took a bus up to Kawaguchiko Fifth Station. There immediately I piled on a couple of layers and we began the hike. We started somewhere around 7:30pm. Ari and I reached the summit around 2am (we never stopped for a break longer than 15 mins, I think) and Lindy reached it around 4am. So climbing in total took about six and a half hours for me. OUCH. It started off fine, but within the first hour my calves were beginning to complain, and I wished I could ditch one of the 2 liter bottles in my backpack.

By the time I reached Seventh Station I was about to drop, but luckily by the last Seventh Station I'd pushed past the lameass/whine barrier and gone into automatic mode, wherein I stopped feeling things like soreness and pain. I just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and not getting blown over by the wind during the periods of Rock Death, that is, climbing over miniature boulders. That part sucked ass. At least it wasn't cold.

By the time I reached eighth station, about 2/3 the way up the mountain I think I'd put on every single piece of clothing I had, and thanks to my outermost jacket which served very well as a windbreaker, I was not cold. I felt really bad for Ari who didn't have anything vaguely windbreaker-ish and lacked the resistance against cold/wind that four years living in Boston had trained me to endure, and she was totally freezing her ass off before we got to the last 8th station. I think we all briefly considered giving up sometime between the last 8th station and the summit (when we hit yet another disheartening block of Rock Death), but by then we were too far along to take the walk back own (aka. The Walk of Shame) and seeing as we'd we called ourselves the Zettee Katsu Gumi, we weren't about to give up. Or at least I wasn't, as I was determined to prove to my awesome Three Kingdoms ancestors that I was worthy of el kickass, and would get to the summit before sunrise if it was the last thing I did.

She made it ahead of me because she needed to keep moving and I was going too slowly amongst the pack of Japanese hikers, but I made it to the top just a few minutes after her, wherein the winds on the summit were obviously trying to kill me. They were literally strong enough to blow a person over, apparently because there was a typhoon coming. Any accounts of how much it sucks to climb Fuji are not exaggerated. It really does suck that badly.

I don't think the temperature was below freezing at the summit, but goddamn the windchill sure knocked it down to far below freezing. I hadn't been that cold since that January blizzard in Boston, and even then at least I had a down coat and several layers of pants, instead of once layer of short shorts and one pair of khakis. My legs are now complaining so loudly I can barely walk, and I grimace every time I walk up and down stairs. (Down is worse.)

I waited about three hours for the sunrise, sitting down in a hut huddled with other Japanese people for warmth. The sunrise, which came around 5am, was absolutely gorgeous. I have never seen a more beautiful sunrise than that. It was wonderful seeing the very rim of the sun crawl above the horizon, lighting the clouds with a pink and orange glow, and then see it rise to a full disk of glowing red. Absolutely astounding, and had I brought gloves with me (a huge oversight; never climb Fuji without gloves) I would have taken pictures. But as it was, I was freezing my ass off, shivering uncontrollably (at least I was shivering, cause if I weren't it would've meant I was going through the beginning stages of hypothermia) and not about to take my fingers out of my pockets for things as lame as pictures.

The way down was also shitty, but instead of Rock Death, we got sand death. Killer on the quads and the ankles, let me tell you. Ari and Lindy and I discussed many times the merits of having bringing an inner tube with you to Fuji, and sliding your way down, using our hiking sticks as punts. Would have been a much nicer ride.

Anyways, it seems odd now because the entire trip up and down Fuji seems like a surreal dream I never really experienced. If any of you guys ever go to Japan, totally go up Fuji. It really tests what you're really made out of, and whether or not you're hardcore. I at least, can now claim that I am.

And I am never, ever, ever climbing Fuji again. It is truly a once in a lifetime experience.