Day 5

So whilst this isn't actually Day 5, I will cover off the descent of Mount Fuji and what we did after the climb.

So having summited at 04:03, and the walking round the crater it was time to begin our descent down the mountain. Normally there is a seperate trail to go down, but we need to to begin our descent on the trail we had just walked up. We slowly began to climb our way down the moutain to the 8th Station. Climbing up is easy to get motivated because you want to get to the top, now we had reached the top I think it was getting more and more difficult to keep going. After hitting the 8th station we where able to move to the normal trail down, which was very small clinker, this meant it was like walking on the Moon (not that I have done that, but how I imagine it to be). With every step it was hard not to fall over, and there where a couple of falls. after a 4 and a half hour descent we where back at the car. Shattered and exhausted.

We had come, we had seen, and we had conquered Mount Fuji. A fantastic mountain but we know full understand the quote "one who never climbs Mount Fuji is a fool, and one who climbs twice is twice the fool." It was absolutley amazing, but I would not want to do it again.

Now after climbing mount fuji there is only one thing to do an Onsen, which is very popular in Japan. All we knew is it was a hot pool, at the base of Mount Fuji. The legs where looking forward to this. As we arrived, as with all Japanese culture we removed our shoes, and walked into the reception, here we where given 2 towels, and off we went to the changing room. Now this Onsen, has 16 different baths, but the Japanese way. So Luke explained what we had to do next, we where to strip down, and use the little towel to cover ourselves. We then made our way into a big bathroom, here we used the showers to clean ourselves with the little towel. Once we where all clean (this took a while) we headed into the garden and found a little hot bath, in a little bowl, there where 3 so one each. Because we used the small towel to clean ourselves we had to then put the towel on our head, to show we weren't making the water dirty. Over the course of the next hour, we switched between some big hot pools, small hot pools, jacuzzi, sauna, peppermint bath. You name it they had it. We then headed back to the hotel, and having told ourselves we would force ourselves to stay awake, we both fell asleep, and didn't wake up until this morning, hence no blog update.


So all in all a very interesting experience, but more importantly we are glad for all the encouragement and messages from home, but also grateful for the kind donations that are coming through every day.