Mt. Fuji

With just days to go before I would finally leave Japan I decided to climb Mt. Fuji. Having chosen to take the tough option and I climb it from the very bottom, I kitted myself out with a fleece (North Face, no less), puma trainers, and an umbrella as a walking stick. Two days later I was sick from the altitude and dehydration – but I did it. And I only got lost once.



At the heart of every Shinto temple is a sacred object, and it seems that even though the buildings themselves were abandoned, they dared not move these objects, instead secured them behind locked fences.



Mt. Fuji is a sacred mountain, and many climb it as a pilgrimage. However many of the old temples have been abandoned as more and more start the climb from 5th station.



Split wood and open roofs were all that was left, though some had left offerings of tea and packages at the ruins.





Eventually the tree line petered out, and Mt Fuji, still technically an active volcano, was revealed.



You really felt like you had the whole earth spread out before you.



As night fell I became thoroughly sick from dehydration and altitude. The "old man" whose family I had teamed up with powered on, while I took shelter in a hut near the summit. It was a wretched night but the sunrise made up for every minute of it.