Dancing with the Doala

Japan has become the land of firsts for me. First time I've lived in a different country; first time I've been to an international music festival; first time I've climbed Mount Fuji etc.

Well, last weekend brought about another first for me: I went to a baseball game for the first time.

One of the trainers, organised a huge group to go to a game and I was invited along. Since I know about as much about baseball as I do about Scientology you may wonder why I decided to accept this invitation. Basically, I thought it was about time I found out what the world of organised sports was really about. I got told at the last minute that watching baseball is just like watching the cricket. If I'd been told that earlier there would have been no way you could've gotten me to that game.

Thankfully the game wasn't nearly as boring as cricket. Baseball is a very huge thing in Japan. And what makes the games the most interesting (for me at least) was the fans.

Walking into the stadium, I felt as if I'd walked into the quidditch scenes in the Harry Potter movies. The fans are so super-genki enthusiastic. The different supporters sit on opposing sides of the stadium and try and out do each other with their flag waving, dancing and chants. Anyone who was anyone had plastic clappers and stomped, jigged and yelled along with the team chants.

The local team are the Chunichi Dragons but their mascot is a beige koala (meh?). Their mascot was like Bruce Lee with a giant, flat faced head. He pulled some pretty spectacular flips and twists in between innings.

Unfortunately, the local team lost. I swear it wasn't my fault. I didn't even watch the game that closely so I couldn't have jinxed them with my creepy staring.

My lesson of the day: One doesn't go to ball games to actually watch the game. Socalising, drinking beer and people watching are the true aims of the game.

I am Fuji's Fool

Give me a mountain and I will want to climb it. I’m masochistic like that. Since I’m in Japan I figured I might as well try and tackle the highest peak in the country. This weekend was the last of the official hiking season on Mount Fuji, so a few of us decided to make the attempt while we could.

Our group consisted of Joseph, Candice (his friend visiting from Adelaide), Judy, Joel and I. We were the Triple J IC. So we left Nagoya on Sunday morning and spent five hours on local trains getting to Gotemba station. Obviously it’s possible to get there faster but we were all still using our unlimited train tickets so this way was cheaper.

Mount Fuji is split into eight stations and you start climbing from the fifth stations (unless you are completely and utterly insane with no pain receptors in your body). We arrived at Subashiri gogome (fifth station) at 6pm. We decided to relax there for a while so our body could acclimatise to the change in altitude. They say a lot of people don’t give their bodies enough time to acclimatise and suffer from altitude sickness. I did not want to leave my mark on Mount Fuji by puking on it.

Since the weather of the previous week had been absolutely hideous: torrential rain, flash floods, electrical storms, and even an earthquake (yes, apparently an earthquake happened on Saturday while I was at work but I was completely oblivious) I was expecting the same kind of treatment on Fuji. I was preparing to basically drown as we tried to climb up the mountain. Therefore I was surprised but thankful that the weather held up beautifully. It only rained for the first ten minutes of our hike.

We hiked through the night and I took sadistic pleasure in blinding the others with the flash of my camera. Joseph, Candice and I enlightened Joel on the wonders of Australian slang. We all decided that since Mount Fuji doesn’t have any monsters to call its own we would introduce Drop Bears to Fuji. They’d be ninja Drop Bears.

We reached the eighth station at around 1am and it was glorious to rest by the dying embers of the fireplace and chillax for a while. One of the most ridiculous things I saw up there was, on one hand you had people inhaling from cans of oxygen to acclimatise to the thin air, then on the other you had people smoking. What kind of crazy nutter wants to shrink their lungs while on top of the highest peak in Japan?

From the eighth station it took us another hour and half to get to the summit. There were so many people trying to get up to the summit at the same time and the paths were narrowing down so we experienced a bit of a traffic jam. This was more of a blessing than a curse though, since it forced us to rest as the air got thinner and the atmosphere colder.

We finally reached the peak at 3:30am. Woo, we made it before sunrise. So all we had to do was wait for the sun to make an appearance. It was so ridiculously cold up there. We piled on all the layers we’d brought and went crazy trying to stay warm.

I still couldn’t believe how well the weather had held up. The sky was perfectly clear. The stars up there were soul-achingly beautiful. I saw two shooting stars. Across the horizon we could also see the distant lights of the cities. The sun rise itself just tore at the heart. I felt like a deity looking down on the Earth and I did not feel worthy to be in the presence of such glory. There was also the most amazing cloud formation. It looked like a battleship sailing majestically across the sea of clouds.

Unfortunately, the glory of the sunrise went straight to my bladder and I desperately needed to pee. But apparently the toilets at the summit were closed (you have to pay to use the toilets on Mount Fuji). What kind of sadistic, evil creature thought that was a good idea?

So we decided to head back to the eighth station for another rest by the fireplace and maybe a hot chocolate (after finding a toilet). We’d gotten about 15 mins down when we realised we had gone down the wrong way. There was a separate descending route we were supposed to take but we’d gone back down the ascending route. Whoops. We connected to the descending route and proceeded to fall down the mountain.

When we got to the eighth station, a thick white fog wrapped itself around the mountain like something out of a bad fantasy novel. Fortune has nothing on the whims of Mount Fuji. After resting at the eighth station for a couple of hours we decided we wanted helicopters to take us back down. None of us were looking forward to the further 4 hours of hiking we would have to endure. Little did we know…

I can imagine that the descent into Hades would be exactly like the descending route of Mount Fuji, except probably hotter. The way down was a 45 degree decline of crumbly ash gravel. There was nothing to grip to and the slightest motion gave you the momentum of an out of control shotput. I’m quite happy to report that I only majorly stacked it about 5 times. I fell over a lot more than that but those times were the most painful. But hey, who needs a whole coccyx bone or skin on their feet?

It only took us 3 hours to fall down the mountain. Yes, that’s right. It took 8 hours to climb up but only 3 to come back down. By the end of it, I felt like dropping to my knees and screaming to the heavens (Leo DiCaprio in Romeo and Juliet style) and screaming ‘I am Fuji’s fool!’.

We were all deliriously happy to make it back to the fifth station. We still had to wait an hour for the bus so we just relaxed (i.e. collapsed) and looked at souvenirs. After another 5 hours on trains, I finally got home around 8pm and pottered around till 11:30pm when I fell into the sleep of the dead. I certainly made the most of my weekend, considering I was awake for 34.5 hours straight. And now I can officially say that I have conquered Mount Fuji.

This is my very short video of the sunrise for your benefit. It was too cold to record for too long. Just ignore Joel's voice in the background.