If you want to climb a mountain but don’t feel like chopping wood, fighting bears, or losing your 4G LTE coverage, Fuji is the mountain for you. With over 250,000 climbers during its summer climbing season alone, Fuji is the most climbed and most tourist-friendly mountain in the world (your guess as to which is the chicken and the egg). Any adult in reasonably good health can pull it off without training, experience, or self-discipline.
Bring the following:
- Food and water (twice as much as you think you’ll need)
- Head light
- Hiking staff (can buy on the mountain)
- Lots of warm, wind-resistant, rain-resistant clothes
- Lots of 100 yen coins (for pay toilets on the mountain)
You’ll start by riding a bus up to what appears to be an outlet mall but is actually Fuji’s 5th station. There are 9 numbered stations plus the summit. The 5th station gets you to about 2300m out of 3776m. Relax here for a bit to adjust to the altitude. Grab a bite to eat. Buy a hiking staff (1000 yen). You can brand it for 300 yen at each station to get a swag Dresden-like staff, or you can be loser and walk up with a plain wooden pole. Set off when you’re ready.
The most popular trails up the mountain aren’t particularly difficult. You’re generally going up gravelly slopes, stairs, and rocks. On the rocks you’ll occasionally want to use your hands/hiking staff for balance. That’s as hard as it gets.
Many people choose to climb at night so they can arrive at the summit in time to see the sunrise. If you arrive too early, you’ll be stuck for hours with nothing to do on the coldest part of the mountain at the coldest time of day. If you fall behind schedule, you’ll get stuck behind tourist caravans and miss the sunrise, most likely because you’ve died of boredom. Without traffic, it’s about 6 hours to the top.
You can rest in cabins at the stations on the way up. I believe they require reservations and cost money.
The path down is total bullshit. It’s the same gravelly zigzag trail for 6 hours. I’d rather permanently live on the mountain than climb down this trail again.
A Japanese proverb puts it best:
“He who climbs Mount Fuji once is a wise man. He who climbs it twice is a fool.”
I remember laughing at the concept of pay toilets watching Rocko’s Modern Life back when. “Ha ha! Five dollars for literally everything! Is fanny johk!”
The concept of a society with near-infinite tolerance for consumer-dicking policies hadn’t yet occurred to me.
But then Japan came into view; a culture with no expectation to be able to purchase their own land and consequently a completely fucked notion of ‘disposable income’.
How far the world has come. How much broader my world.
In their defense, there’s no underground plumbing up there, and hauling shit down a mountain can’t come cheap. Many of the toilets at least worked on the honor system (though others had coin-operated turnstiles. No change? Too bad.)
As for other options, it’s hard to have an entrance fee to a mountain. There’s already a suggested 1000 yen donation at the start of the trails. Guess how well that works. Taxes? It’s sensible, though a tough sell. “Let’s raise taxes to keep cheapass foreigners from shitting all over our most revered landmark!” Ultimately they’d just do the Japanese thing and stick to tradition, even if that tradition is the horror and oppression of pay toilets.