When we first arrived in Japan about two and a half months ago, we sort of had the opportunity to climb mount Fuji. It was after the “Official climbing season” of July and August but as we have learned still well within the realm of possibility for us; unfortunately we decide to pass it up because of the logistics of it. Some people had told us it wasn’t worth the effort to go in the off season because of the cold weather (… wait, we are Canadians!), plus we were a ways away. But today I really wish we hadn’t.

We did decide we would catch the bus up to the fifth station today just to have a look and see what the view would be like, see what we were missing. The bus leaves Kawaguchiko station almost every hour and takes about 50 minutes to get up to 2,300 meters. Like most things in Japan it was fairly crowded with tourists and women with apparent mental problems wearing skirts and nylons, but we did go for a little walk up the trail and found a little solitude to enjoy the sights. Being only about 2/3 of the way up we still had an amazing view of the surrounding area, not to mention Fuji. It was one of those windy days that makes the mountain catch the clouds and spin them around in the back eddy. Quite an amazing sight if you ask me, makes me even more excited to get to Tibet and see the Himalayas.

Tomorrow were headed back to Tokyo for about ten days before we leave for China on the 28th of November. We (Carolyn) is starting to put together a loose itinerary for that leg of our journey, thus far it involves Hong Kong, Chengdu, Lhasa (and surrounding area), Xi’an, Guilin and then back to Hong Kong. Chinas is such a huge country all of our train trips are more than 24 hours! If anyone knows of somewhere we shouldn’t miss let us know.

Mike