Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad

Author:Chris Broad
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Humor, Social Science, Travel, Essays & Travelogues, Asia, Topic, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Japan, East, Popular Culture
ISBN: 9781529907278
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2023-08-02T23:00:00+00:00

15.

The Wise Men of Fuji

JULY 2013

‘THE CLEAN AIR AT THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT FUJI: Packed in this can is the clean natural air you can breathe only when you are at the top of Japan’s number-one mountain, Mount Fuji.’

– 850 yen ($7)

Wow! Why bother climbing 3,776 metres to the summit of Mount Fuji when I can simply buy a can of air from the summit instead?

As I held the blue tin can, the image of Fuji emblazoned on the front, I was awfully tempted. In mere seconds, I could crack it open, inhale the enchanting air within and then hop back on the bus to Tokyo.

But then again, how could one be sure it was filled with authentic air from the summit?

It seemed preposterous that a team of people would climb almost 4 kilometres to the summit of Japan’s tallest mountain with rucksacks bundled with empty cans simply to ‘capture’ the air.

And yet if it were any other mountain, I wouldn’t have believed it. Mount Fuji is no normal mountain. So sacred are its slopes that until 1868 women were banned from climbing it, for fear they would distract men from their religious duties. A symbol of Japan, the stratovolcano, with its almost perfect conical shape, had inspired countless artists, writers and poets and had been declared a cultural site by UNESCO that year.

Nothing said cultural appreciation better than devouring a mouthwatering plate of katsu curry with rice moulded into the shape of the mountain at the rest stop at the base of Fuji one hour before setting off on my climb.

I placed the can back on the shelf and walked out of the souvenir store at Mount Fuji’s fifth station, the main starting point. I gazed up along a gentle slope that grew steeper, practically vertical, to the distant summit. The dark black volcanic peak didn’t exactly look inviting. Somehow that hadn’t dissuaded the 300,000 people that did the climb each year.

I was about to embark on the toughest physical challenge of my life and I didn’t feel at all ready. Nishiyama sensei’s voice replayed in my head:

‘Remember, Chris san. A wise man climbs Mount Fuji once. Only a fool climbs it twice.’

I was starting to think a wise man would avoid climbing bloody Mount Fuji at all.

It was 5 p.m. Fuelled by my mound of Fuji-shaped katsu curry, I fastened my backpack and began the hellish fourteen-hour round trip into the sky. A journey that would take us through the night and hopefully reward us with a life-changing sunrise.

I just wish I’d slept the night before.

The cheapest way to travel in Japan is by night bus. It cost just 3,500 yen to make the eight-hour journey from Sakata on the far-flung west coast to Shinjuku bus station, arriving in the heart of Tokyo at 6 a.m.

But it came at a price. Sleep was no guarantee.

Japan has some truly fabulous night buses with seats that fully recline and are walled off like cocoons for privacy. Mine had none of that.

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