Craziest Weekend Ever?

Perhaps.
This past weekend, I went to Tokyo. The plan was to go out Friday night in Tokyo, sleep, get up the next morning and see more of Tokyo, then go to Mt. Fuji that afternoon and climb it, come back to Tokyo Sunday then go home.

Here is what actually happened:

Tokyo

I met up with a bunch of people from my summer program, some who live there and some who were visiting, like me. I activated my wonderful JR Pass which gives me "unlimited" access to the Japan Rail tracks and made it from Hiroshima to Tokyo in 5 hours. I got to Tokyo during rush hour on a Friday. It was FULL of people and carrying around a large backpack not only makes you stand out, but also hated by people who are just trying to get on their train.

My first stop was Shibuya. It is said that this is the busiest subway station in the world! After spending 5 minutes outside the station, you can definitely believe it as you see hundreds of people walk across to the station every 5 minutes or so. This is the part of Tokyo that is generally represented in the movies, with the bright neon lights EVERYWHERE! I've heard from Tokyoites that sitting at the Starbucks in the building across from the station and just watching people cross the street is a fun activity.

Anyway, we were all meeting up at the Hachiko statue in Shibuya. The Hachiko statue is a statue of an Akita dog. The story is that of a dog who would meet his master every day after work. After his owner died, the dog still faithfully showed up at the station at 3pm waiting for his master to show up. He continued to do this until his own death 11 years later. Hachiko became famous and a symbol of loyalty to all Japanese, so after the dog died they built a statue to honor him. Now it is a very common meeting place and some people even hold up signs to find each other. Luckily, I was able to quickly find my group.

We went to an Izikaya, which I talked about in a previous post--like a Tapas place. Overall, a fun time was had. Japanese cuisine is very methodical in a sense. Certain foods must be eaten certains ways. During our meal, we had to cook one of the courses ourselves. After the pan was empty, we received bowls of noodles. Since that is all we got, we figured we'd toss in the noodles into the pan. Well, the waiter was coming back with the sauce for the noodles just as we were dumping them into the pan. The guy's face was priceless--I wish I had a camera. He screamed something in Japanese while holding his hand to his forehead with the most astonished look I've ever seem. Then he ran away saying something in Japanese we couldn't understand. The only thing we understood is that we had done something terribly wrong with the noodles. He later returned with more noodles and sauce to dip the noodles in and apologized. Poor guy, though his thought was probably "stupid Americans".

After the izikaya, we went searching for dessert. There was a Haagen Daz nearby but we lost a couple of people who went the wrong direction at the main crosswalk. Now this doesn't seem like a big problem, but here, when there are hundreds of people crossing at once, it can easily become a problem. The problem wasn't so much losing the people, as it was not making it to Haagen Daz in time. We arrived 5 minutes after closing =( There was a place next door with desserts, but they were $8 and it was a couple of scoops of ice cream on a half loaf of bread (literally half of a loaf). We decided to go to "Mac Donaldo's" instead. The rumor was they had melon milkshakes. This deserves an entry to itself, but the Japanese have VERY tasty desserts. My favorite so far are anything that has melon in it.

After McD's, we went back to Hachiko to meet up with more people. The plan was to go to "Harlem", a hip hop club in Shibuya in the Dogenzaka area or "Love Hotel Hill". This area is apparently the world capital of love hotels--places where you can shack up with someone you love (or don't love) and make love (or have sex). Apparently there are also themed love hotels--Gothic castles, Middle Eastern temples--though I did not go to one, this is just coming from the guidebook. Anyway, Harlem was strict with ID's and since some people didn't bring them, we ended up going to Club Atom instead. Atom was a lot of fun for the first 3.5 hours. The last 1.5 was the harsh one. We went straight to the hip hop floor as the others were techno and trance. Amazingly, the male dancer in the trance room was wearing slightly LESS clothing than the female dancer!

At the club, we basically took over the dance floor seeing as how it was small and there were a bunch of us. The funny part was that there was a female DJ who was pretty good, but she had groupies! There were like 5 guys standing in front of the DJ stage just going nuts! Also, there was a video screen next to the DJ stage and people sitting were watching the videos. So EVERYONE was facing one direction--it was very odd to be dancing all facing one way. The crowd was decent, maybe because it was mostly our group dancing. The people we were hanging with were a lot of fun. There's this one guy in particular that really surprised me. I will call him J1 as there are many J's in our group. So J1 I met literally off the plane when we got to Japan. He's a very nice guy, but also very quiet--typical preppy white guy engineer. Well, once we got on the dance floor, this guy was busting out lyrics to all the songs--it was incredible. At one point he and FJ (female J) had a little competition as to who could recite the lyrics the best. He won hands down. That kept me entertain for much of the night actually. As did the Japanese people dancing hip hop and THEM trying to recite lyrics.

Anyway, the plan was to go clubbing and crash for the night nearby to be prepared for Mt. Fuji the next day. Well, one person, Mi, had her wallet stolen so leaving the club at 3:30am lead to staying at the club looking for a wallet until 4am at which point we decided it was best to wait for the trains to start running at 5am and not pay $50 for a taxi. So much for getting some sleep.

The scene of Shibuya at 5am was incredible. There were sooo many people out just walking around or sleeping. Yes, sleeping. I wish I had a picture of this, but there was one guy in a suit who had taken off his shoes, placed them and his jacket folded on his briefcase next to it, and was resting his feet on a ledge with his back on the ground. The crime rate is miniscule here so there is no fear of having anything stolen. This image exemplifies the way of life in Japan.

So, 5am in Shibuya...the one restaurant that is open is too crowded and guess what...McD's is open 24 hours! So we headed there for some breakfast. Then B, Mo, and I headed off to J1's place to crash for the night. He forgot to mention that his place is INCREDIBLY tiny. Well, a place to crash is better than sleeping on the streets (although maybe in Japan its not so bad).

We had tickets to see Kabuki theater Saturday morning at 11am, so by the time we had showered, we got about 1 hour of rest before having to take off again. We went to Kokuritsu Gekijo, the National Theater of Japan, to watch an entirely Japanese Kabuki theather show. Kabuki means "unorthodox" or "eccentric" and was originally a dance troupe of women back in 1603 during the Edo period, but soon changed to become Ka(song) Bu(dance) Ki(techinique/skill) shows and also was performed by men only. Our show was entertaining, despite my short naps (yes, they were short), I was able to kinda understand what was going on. A man gets killed by some guy, leaving behind a little boy which another man comes to protect and avenge his father's death. In the meantime, there is some woman (who is actually a man--very reminiscent of Shakespearean plays) who he falls in love with and is an awesome fighter and kills like 5 samurai (or the same guy who kept coming back to life) that attacked the main guy and in the end they kill the guy who killed the father and they're one happy family. Now, since this was all in Japanese, this is the most I gather from my awake time in the theather and the acting.

After Kabuki theater, we were on the fence about climbing Mt. Fuji. We had been checking the weather and it said rain, so we decided we'd ask the person at the counter what they'd recommend. The woman at the counter was very nice and informed us that the best time to climb was August but it was ridiculously crowded then and on Sunday they'd be getting a typhoon so probably Saturday night was the best night to go. So we went.

Mt. Fuji

Yes, we realized that we had slept only one hour, but maybe we could sleep more on the bus to the 5th station. And yes, we realized that all we had had for food (besides Chinese for lunch) had been Mc Donaldo's, and yes, we knew that there would be a typhoon coming in the next day. But for some reason, this did not stop us. Maybe because we wanted to be adventurous or more likely because we were being stubborn and didn't want to change our plans.

The drive to Mt. Fuji was not memorable. Maybe because I slept most of the way, but it was on the highway, so didn't miss much. The only thing I really remember about it was thinking this was a stupid idea.

We got to the Kawaguchi-ko 5th Station, which lies at 2305m, and had more fried food and bought a nice souvenir walking stick. At 8pm about half the group departed. Traditionally, people climb Fuji-san to get to the top in time to see the sunrise. Two ways of doing this: 1)climb during the day, sleep at one of the huts at the 8th station and climb the rest of the way at 3am; 2)climb all night until you reach the top hopefully by sunrise--not too early or you'll freeze--not too late or you'll miss the sunrise. Well, we decided to do the second one leaving early enough to give us time to reach the top and take a break in between. The first group took off at 8pm and was me and three girls, Mi, Mo, FJ, and J2(male J). The second group waited for more people meeting up with us an took off an hour later. At around 9pm, I felt like I was going to pass out. I was carrying my large backpack and although it was practically empty, it felt like I was carrying a ton of bricks. At the 6th station (2390m) J2 offered to swap bags since his was smaller, but I was stubborn and said I was fine (though I doubt I actually looked fine).

We climbed some more and at one point I thought I was having an asthma attack as I started wheezing. A few minutes later, after I thought I was going to die on the mountain from lack of oxygen, I swapped packs with J2 and man, that was a life saver.

We continued on our route up the mountain and hit the 7th station (2700m). At that point, I was seriously reconsidering, but fear of going back down alone kept me going foward. The climb thus far had been very gravelly but not very rough. As soon as we left the 7th station that all changed. The rest of the way up was mostly rock climbing. At one point, I thought this is probably what Mars is like, since the ground is kinda red--it is a volcano afterall. Also, being mad at the moutain and myself, I was very pessimistic at the idea of life on Mars EVER. Seriously though, if Mars is like Mt. Fuji, it will be uninhabitable. Ok, well maybe some shrubs, but that's all.

Anyway, in retrospect, the rock climbing was the fun part of the climb up. I'm by no means saying it was easy, in fact, it was the most challenging. The other climbing involved stairs and was all so steep and uphill, it was not fun--mostly because it gave you a chance of thinking what else you could be doing on a Saturday night than climbing up a mountain that is kicking your ass and thinking how it is possible that the book says grandparents and kids climb this thing all the time. At least with the rocks you have to think of which route to take and determine which rocks are stable etc. keeping your mind busy. And its even more challenging carrying a walking stick in one hand and a flashlight in the other!

We went slowly (ok I went slowly and J2 was nice enough to stay behind with me and the girls were up ahead by a couple of meters) hitting all of the huts. The more defined trail (stairs) were near the huts so you knew you were close by but somehow that was always the most difficult part for me--I knew I was soo close but was in SO much pain, I felt my legs were going to fall off every time I got close to the last steps and that I wouldn't make it to the hut.

Somewhere past the first 8th station (3360m) we lost Mi, Mo and FJ. I was incredibly tired (nothing like climbing Mt. Fuji to show you how out of shape you are) and J2 was getting altitude sickness so we stopped at one of the huts. I really wanted to keep climbing (to end the misery) but J2 was turning blue (literally) and requested that we stop for an hour. Since he was afterall carrying my bag, I decided I'd stay at the hut at the cost of a $30 sleeping bag on the bottom of a bunk holding about 20 people than continue in the dark, by myself, carrying a ton of bricks. We were only an hour from the top and since it was 2am, I figured a one hour break was bearable. I slept about 15 min. At 2:30am, people started getting up and getting ready for their climb up to the top and the hut opened up their kitchen with the women screaming "Irrashaimassen" (welcome) at the top of her lungs offering miso soup.

Three AM rolled along and I woke up J2 who had now returned to a normal skin tone. He did not want to get up so I gave a motivational speech (can you imagine ME, the person who was about to pass out every 5 seconds doing this) about having climbed all this way and being on a mission to reach the top by sunrise and how we can do it and aren't going to feel sick or weak. Ok, so it didn't quite work as well as I'd hoped as he plopped back down. At which point I said I was shivering from the cold and needed to get up and move, and I'm leaving and you can stay if you want, and got up and left. Well this worked like a charm. Two seconds later, J2 was on his feet and we were off to finish our climb.

As soon as I stepped out of the hut, the view was amazing. All of a sudden there were hundreds of people outside climbing the mountain--all of the smart people that were sleeping in the huts while we were climbing during the night. The were all wearing flashlights (most people are smart and wear headlamps) and all you could see was the glow of hundreds of flashlight all along the trail up the mountain. That is perhaps the most memorable moment of the entire event. Unfortunately, due to the darkness, I couldn't get a picture, so you'll have just imagine it (I did take a picture, but all you see is blurs--those are people's flashlights).

Outside the bathroom of the hut, I met 2 other guys (T and P) who we climbed up with for a while. Due to the congestion of people, climbing to the top by sunrise was not possible. But we got pretty damned close. On our way up we found group 2 climbers and we took a break for the sunrise a couple of meters from the top. Once we reached the top (3776m), I found Mi, Mo and FJ and headed right back down. I did take a picture at the top, but with all the crowds, it was hard to do anything else up there (there is a Pub at the top and several people were drinking champagne) and too cold to stay outside. Plus it was cloudy and the crater wouldn't been visible.

The descending route was much easier than the ascending route, though I did manage to fall 4 times on the way down. This is because the path is sand. All sand. I had read on the map and in the book that it was called the sand slide down and that people actually slide down, but did not take it literally. Actually there are many things about climbing Fuji-san that I should've taken literally--like people saying that its a miserable climb. Anyway, the sand slide. Yeah. Sand is difficult to walk down as you do end up sliding. Now if you were wearing hiking boots, maybe not so bad. But after having twisted one ankle on the way up and wearing sneakers, walking down on sand isn't the most stable thing, resulting in multiple falls. My body absolutely hates me by this time.

Again, after hitting one of the huts bathrooms, I lost Mi, Mo and FJ. Granted, I told them I'd be going down very slowly and they should go ahead. But we got to a fork and they were far ahead in the wrong direction. I attempted to get their attention by screaming, but they were too far away to hear me. I though that maybe they'd ask someone if they were going the right way or notice that there were several groups of people climbing back up the hill and turning in a different direction as they too had gone the wrong way (as this is the hint that made me go the right way). I was mistaken. I waited about 45 min for them to turn back, but then decided that I needed to start going down or else I'd miss my bus back. I climbed down by myself for a while and actually it was very peaceful, with the occasional fall that would interrupt that, but hey, its just sand. At that moment, but only for that moment, I was glad I had climbed Mt. Fuji. Then I fell again and cursed the damn thing. I walked alone some more and found T and P who I had just met at the bathroom hut a couple hours earlier. We had a nice chat down the mountian cursing the thing and sharing miserable stories about climbing rocks. He too had been out clubbing the night before in Rappongi (red light district) and hadn't gotten much sleep. We decided near the bottom that it wasn't worth the pain, climbing up the mountain, and wanted to warn the people on their way up, but didn't say anything (they were Japanese afterall and probablywouldn't understand anyway).

Once I got to the bottom, I found the rest of the group (with the exception of Mi, Mo and FJ who ended up at a different 5th station) and we headed back to Tokyo. I was supposed to take the last train home with M so everyone had the luxury of going home to shower and sleep, but I had time to kill so I decided to do more sightseeing. I went to Harajuku and saw the Meiji Shrine and also the crazy girls of Harajuku, Cos-play-zoku (Costume Play Gang). These are girls that dress up in goth clothes and babydolls and other clothing and sit by the station taking pictures with tourists. Supposedly they are the rejects at school and this is their weekly escape--its like the gang that hangs out at the Harvard Sq. station, except mostly girls.

After that I headed to Tokyo station for my train home to Hiroshima.

Lessons learned: Do not climb a mountain: after staying out all night clubbing; after having McD's for 3 meals in 24 hours; if a typhoon is excepted any time soon as the wind is killer, if you are carrying a large pack or not wearing proper hiking shoes, if you don't have a headlamp. Fuji-san is no joke and you will be miserable. Finally, yes, I can say I had a adventuresome weekend and very crazy indeed and I'm sure in a couple of weeks, when I no longer feel the pain in every single muscle of my body and do not remember the misery of climbing the mountain, I will say it was a great experience. For now, while it still hurts to move, all I can say is "DON'T DO IT!"

Pictures of Tokyo here and Mt. Fuji here.