Day 5: Tokyo to Mt. Fuji

Good morning! As a testament to the catchiness of yesterday’s music selections during arts & craft time, Matt still has the Whitney Houston Bodyguard song stuck in his head as of 5:15am. That was when we set our alarms to wake-up today — giving us plenty of time to get dressed, finalize our packing, and be ready to catch our bus to Mt. Fuji.

Heading down to the lobby, we confirmed our luggage-forwarding service to deliver the bags we didn’t need on Mt. Fuji directly to our next hotel in Kyoto. Luggage-forwarding service in Japan is pretty smooth! After providing the next hotel’s address, the front desk agent completed the paperwork for us. Once all five bags were down, they measured them to calculate the cost. We paid and were on the way. Our bags will be waiting for us in Kyoto when we arrive tomorrow evening.

See you in Kyoto!

That process did not take long, so we were safely ahead of our scheduled 6am departure. Grabbed one last handful of squid peanuts and we bid adieu to the lovely Shiba Park Hotel. We walked to the Oeda line, and caught a train to Shinjuku, which runs about every five minutes. When we arrived, we walked about 10 minutes through the station and then across the street to the bus terminal. During last night’s planning summit, we bought tickets for the 7:35am bus to Gotemba Station. We arrived at 7am, so there was time to eat some breakfast and relax.

Cordwood is now our map

B-4. Make sure you board the 7:35 bus “B-4” it leaves.

Not surprisingly, the bus arrived and left right on time for the one-hour and 45-minute trip. We did have assigned seats (that we could not choose ourselves), and the woman who ended up sitting next to Matt was immediately grumpy that he was there. Or maybe she took offense to the Wierd Al movie he was watching on his phone. Another one rides the bus.

Grumpy seatmates aside, we made it to Gotemba station a few minutes early. Then we had to cross through the station to get to the shuttle busses on the other side. We found the stop for the Subashiri 5th Station and bought round-trip tickets. The shuttle only comes once an hour, but we timed it pretty well with the bus and only had a short wait… no stress.

The shuttle took another 45 minutes driving up to the 5th Station at 2,000 meters. When we arrived, we spent a few minutes getting ourselves ready to hike. We also bought some souvenirs in order to get change in coins for the mountain hut toilets. Melanie acquired an awesome stick called a kongō-zue that will be hand-branded with stamps (and one sticker!) at each hut we visit along the hike. Very cool.

When we were ready, we started towards the trail. Before we could officially start, we had to present our permits. And they were checking! No weakly-enforced Half-Dome Permit situation here. We also prepaid and had a QR code ready to go through the snazzy Mt. Fuji app. They seemed to appreciate this because anyone with a QR code got a commemorative Mt. Fuji pin.

1-2-3-Fuji, 1-2-3-Fuji, 1-2-3-Fuji

Now we officially started the hike! The Subashiri trail is one of the less popular routes (aka. “slightly” less crowded) because the terrain is a bit more tricky. But it also goes thru some really pretty forested areas. We had no complaints.

Shaded forest zone unique to Subashiri Trail

Tree-mendous scenery

To sleep on Mt. Fuji, you have to book a mountain hut, located at various stations up each trail. These huts used to be emergency shelters, but now they sell food and drinks and house bunks for hikers. Each trail has their own set of mountain huts spaced throughout the trail. On the Subashiri Trail, the trailhead is at the 5th station. After about an hour-and-a-half, we made it to the 6th station and decided to take the opportunity to order a bowl of udon noodles while we rested.

Osada Sanso Villa (6th Station, 2450m) udon is delicious

Meanwhile, checking in with team Hakone (foot bath not pictured)

From there, we hiked onward to the next station, the original 6th station, which only took about 30 minutes. We took a another short break before moving on. The next hut is the 7th station, which is where we are staying.

Above the tree line

Non-stop!

As the afternoon began, the sun was attempting to make an appearance in the sky amid the fog and clouds, which created some good views during our last push of the day. We arrived at the new 7th station in good time, a bit after 2pm, and had the rest of the afternoon to relax.

Taiyokan Hut (New 7th Station, 3090m)

We checked into our Taiyokan Mountain hut and were given a brief tour with the key information we needed — including locations of the toilets, the no-shoe zone, the mess hall/common room, and our bunks. After being shown to our futons, Mel and Matt immediately took power naps, while while Jo, Lily, and Cordwood ate some snacks, wrote blogs, and read until we were called for dinner.

Bunk bed and rafter sleeping arrangements at Taiyokan

Melanie power nap

Late afternoon clearing

Rice bros!!!!!

After dinner in the common room, we put on some of the hut’s communal slippers and stepped outside to see the view. The clouds had cleared, the air was a bit cooler, and we could clearly see both the peak of Mt. Fuji as well as the Hakone area to the east/southeast of the mountain. Because Subashiri is on the east side, we could also clearly see the shadow of Mt. Fuji projected on the land below.

Mt. Fuji does shadow puppets

Mt. Fuji silhouette in direction of Lake Ashi

Great evening weather on Mt. Fuji

Stock up for your summit push

Sturdy (???) Mountain Hut construction

For tomorrow, many people like to wake up VERY early (like, midnight-1am) to start hiking and reach the summit for the sunrise. But we are in no rush and would LOVE to avoid crowds by leaving a bit later. The mountain hut employee (who happened to be big Minnesota Timberwolves fan) confirmed this was a great call when we checked in and mentioned our plans to avoid the sunrise people crunch.

See you here at 3am

So, our plan is… play it by ear. We will certainly get up and start before sunrise. We’re heading to sleep at about 8pm tonight, so that shouldn’t be a problem. And then, because we are (still) on the east side of the mountain, we’ll see the sunrise no matter where we are! (Assuming the weather cooperates… knock on wood… which is very easy to do when you are sleeping in the wooden rafters of a mountain hut!)

Surprisingly warm and comfortable rafter sleeping