had trouble with the photo up loader, but here is the writing.
10th August
Right now I’m sitting on the bullet train [Shinkansen] heading north to Sendai, where I’ll stay the night before getting up early to go to my sumo camp. But over the last few days I’ve had some ups and downs all rolled into one, but one of the best times ever was Mt Fuji. I have to thank Ryoji for his detailed diagrams and maps, they were all spot on and I didn’t get lost once. So I was in bed, the night of the 8th at 8.30pm ready to get to the bus terminal which just happened to be one block over to meet the party team Leader Emiko. I was up at 4.00am and throwing things around and just trying to lighten off my hiking pack, but that wasn’t going so well as the weather reports forFuji were, dry weather, with light rain and thunder storms, but will be a very nice day. I’m not joking that was the weather report.
Got to the bus, jumped on with about 30 others, foreigners and Japanese and away we went. A two hour drive to Fujiand the views of Tokyowere quite impressive, but when we got close to Fuji, now that was a site I will always remember. The Japanese are so organised, as we drove into the 5th station it was an ordered chaos for the area. They had guys with light bars directing everyone everywhere and the Japanese people just do as they are told. But it was manic, so many people up at the 5th station. We grabbed our guide, who just so happened had been doing this trek for the last 11 or so years. A quick briefing on what not to do, and that was, don’t slow the group up and keep up with the guide. But off we went, it was a beautiful hot day and it was just unbelievable. Order everywhere, whole families going up this mountain and all in ordered fashion. We had a mixture of people in our group and one young guy named Jonathon ended up our team leader. A very fit young fella who was the perfect person to keep us all in line. A few Americans, English, , Singaporean, Welsh and then the lone kiwi. Now I’d done some homework on Fuji but that was nothing to actually doing it. We were down on our hands and knees at times, and the guides were pushing all of us to keep up. I was struggling and so was a number of others. There was an American family there with two boys aged 8 and 12 but to be honest they were doing quite well. An hour into it I realised we had lost two people off the back and that put the balloon up and they went into a panic. We waited on the side for about half and hour before we had to go on as it was getting cold. One of the other guides went back and found the lost two, one came on to us, the other went back. At the 7th station I was struggling, I couldn’t catch my second wind and I just couldn’t get my breath sorted out. I dug in and just put one foot in front of the other. We reached the 8th station some hours later, and I was shot. I’d picked up a massive headache and I was not feeling so good. We were to get four hours sleep here and then up at 10.00pm ready for the summit which was so close, but I saw the next leg of the trip and new at that point I was in no shape to go anywhere. They served up dinner, but I was gone, started to vomit and the head would not stop thumping. Our rooms were dorm like and we were assigned an area to sleep, all together the whole group and you were assigned a bed pal sort of like marae style but a lot closer. My guy was this Japanese guy who was already in bed, as I climbed in next to him he lifts up the blanket and covers me over with it. Ok, so this is what happens in this dorm type of set up. Bloody funny, there was this little neck role pillow as well and you had to role your head over this through out the night. But for me I was having a bad time, felt like someone was sitting on my chest and my heart was thumping like mad. I got the shivers, then the hots, and then the chest beating thing and an hour later I was up as it was so bloody hot in that room. It was funny we were like a nursery the guide said, got to bed and we all did. The guide said sleep and most of them did. I had to get up and went outside to the most beautiful night that Fuji could give me. The stars where out and they were plentiful. I said a hello to Fuji and sent my ancestors a karakia to keep me safe. I was having a bad time but the cold outside seemed to help me more so I lay down on the decking and just took in the air and tried to control my heart as it was thumping. In a nut shell I had Altitude sickness and I was going down fast. I’ve not had this chest thing before and the nausea and vomiting was just wicked, I had no control over the headaches and I just couldn’t take panadol for this as it was killing me. Just before 10pm I saw emiko our English speaking guide and I had made the decision not to continue on through the night to the summit of Fuji. The guide had already stressed his concerns about my ability to continue. It wasn’t a difficult decision as I knew I had a long holiday yet to take in and I did not want to be a basket case for the rest of it. So I regretfully told Emiko I was in no shape to go further. Funny enough there were others who were not going further as well, for different reasons, but the group did get up and a number of them set off in the dark to climb to the summit for the sun rising. I watched them go like little ants with their head lamps and then went back inside to see if I could sleep, but it was a shit night, I tossed and turned, the head would not settle and I was up and down most of the night, but still trying not to bother others in the dorm. We had people coming in at all times of the night and I had a space next to me, when at about 3 am a Japanese family came in, the father crawled in next to me and I pulled up the blanket and placed it over him as he lay down, he just said thank you and was out cold. So I’d gotten used to the fact that we have to share a blanket and when you share your blanket with another JAPANESE man its not GAY. 
I lay there for a while and then heard the wind flatting like crazy then the rain came in and I wondered how the others were doing climbing in this weather. It was cold out side and the wind would not help. I knew some of the others were not prepared for raining weather and especially the cold. Anyways, I got up a few minutes later and went outside again, a few more trips to the bath room, which in itself is different and I was back in the meeting area lying on the cold floor trying to regain some feeling in my shoulders. But then, the sun started to rise and I was out on the deck looking at this sunrise, the cloud was lower down the mountain and it was doing its best to hide it but Fuji was putting on a show so the wind started to clear it away. It was at this point that I wondered what it was like up on the summit, how it would feel being just that little bit higher, I went to the path way leading up to Fuji and looked up at it and thought nah, I’m ok here, hahaha. I was still not well so made the most of the view I had from the 8th Station. It was tremendous and a life time of seeking out this time had come to this. I was so emotional about it I thought of those who had passed and mostly of my loved ones. Those people who are closest to me and who I love more than anything. I had turned my phone off to save battery power and then realised when I turned it on that I had coverage, I rang Sarah and it was great, I can’t explain the scenery to you, but if you picture a blanket of cotton wool all fluffy and tumbling with lights streaming from behind it, and each set is a different story, well that was Fuji.
There were four of us left to go back down this morning, the others were taking another path and half of the family, the father and his 8 year old and one of the Americans plus me attached ourselves to another group. The walk down was pretty good, but mainly we were getting offFuji. I still have this little itch that says, what if I’d just got on with it, well I do know that I’d not have made it. We meet up with the others and the stories were quite bad. The weather turned nasty, they had to drop one of the girls at another hut and she had to pay another 3000yen to stay there the night, she virtually stopped half way up she had to rest. Good on her, she got further than I did. The young guy Jonathan said he had frost bite on his skin and was a mess, but they all said once the sun started coming up, that it was all worth it. Would they do it again, they all said, Hell no.
Anyways we got offFujiand on our way to my first ever Onsen [Japanese bath house]. I was so looking forward to this bath house thing. Mainly because I’d not had a shower or brushed my teeth in two days. The Japanese are so clean and they all know what they have to do. Everywhere we went, like restuarnts there are slippers for the toilets. If you use the toilets you take your shoes off at the door and put the slippers on do what ever you do and then take them off for the next person. The Onsen is no different, you have a complete shower first, sit on this little stool with shampoo and body soap and your little bamboo bucket you soap up like crazy and clean every bit of yourself before you get into one of the many pools. And yes your all naked, men in one side and women separated off into another area. I spent an hour just sitting in the outside pool absolute bliss. And then there is now, I got back into Shinjuku around 4-30pm back to my hotel to pick up my bag, rearranged everything and off toTokyo. Then on the bullet train toSendaiwhich is where I sit now writing this. I’ve Sumo camp tomorrow so hopefully will have a lot more things to tell you all. I’ve a whole lot of photos so will put them all up, not in any particular order but I’m guessing you will all understand as I don’t want to spend too much time working on my blog site. Well Sendai is the next stop so until next time, East Coast Maori out.
Was Fuji worth it to me………yes it was.