Mount Fuji…conquered

I could not believe this myself. With 5 of my friends, we conquered Japan’s most admired mountain – Fuji. The journey started with few days of around Tokyo traveling. We rented a car, then started our journey from Karuizawa – a resort area where everybody seems to have dog. And from the look of those dogs, we can tell they are not cheapskate. This is the first place after almost a year I stay in Japan I can find “sambal” close to the ones I used to have back in Jakarta. And amazingly I found it in an Italian restaurant, a pizza and pasta restaurant to be precise.

The journey continued, we went to several other areas such as Hakone, Kawaguchiko, and Fuji-Q Highland where we had two roller coasters recorded in Guinness. The first one – “eejyanaika” , a 4-Dimension with the most number of inversions in the world – eejyanaika. The second one – “Fujiyama”, the highest roller coaster (79m) up to the year of 1997 (if I am not mistaken).

Mount Fuji has 5 ways to climb. And most people start from the fifth-stop. We started from 9pm, and three of us plus Vijay reached the peak around 4.30am. You can climb either in the morning to see sunset or in the evening to see sunrise. Most people choose the latter. I would recommend to bring adequate water and snacks because up there the price and quality are just do not make any sense.

Two things I do not like about Mount Fuji, its management, and its management….
First, all the stops are not properly taken care of. They sell “Ramen” for Y800 and it has only noodle and a little bit of “Nori” inside, and tastes really, really bad. Then the public lavatories. At each stops you can only smell the “perfume” coming out from those lavatories. Last but not least, is the direction, especially for going down, which eventually got me and Laura lost. They could have managed all those things better I think, come on Japan, Fuji is one of your most admired spots. Oops, I more thing, climbing up is really tough, but going down is worst. All the sandy roads, will give you dust for your breakfast. Anyways, I think watching the sunrise pays off all the nitty-gritty.

The whole journey was awesome. Me, Ricky, Eugene, Laura, and the last to join Zadli, really had fun. Of 5 nights we spent, only 1 night we stayed in a hotel. For the rest of the nights, we slept comfortably in the car….to cut cost heh… :D