day 21 - uphill from here

24/06/07 21:22
today i got up real early. 6 am something. not because i was eager to sniff the fresh morning air, but because the ascension of mt. fuji was supposed to take quite a while. as i wrote yersterday, the top of the mountain is still closed (unless you pring ice picks and spike boots etc.). it took a bit more than two hours to get to our starting point at about 2300 meters. it is the most popular starting point for tourists in summer, so there were hotels and restaurants and japan`s highest post office. the rain had startd by then, but only a little bit. we started walking and in the begining you could still see the surrounding valley. as we got higher and highr on the rocky path, the rain got heavier and everything became cloudy and foggy. we reached our goal, the seventh station (of ten) after about 2 hours. there weren`t too many people on the path, mainly due to the weather and the mountaintop being closed until next month, i suppose. so it was no woner that of the people who were there, a great number were foreigners. we met some guys from switzerland and a lot of chinese tourists. the japanese can afford to wait i guess. we could have gone one more station up the mountain, but aoki-san was pretty tired (well, he`s like 60) and i didn`t particularly mind because i was soaked by the rain. i guess we made a good 800 or 900m in height. the way down went faster, but by the end we could barely see farther than 10m ahead thanks to the fog. wisely we had brought spare clothes and enjoyed a dry ride home with a little detour to hakone, a nice village in the mountains. new prefectures: yamanashi and kanagawa. and i forgot nara prefecture in the last count.