Climbing Mt Fuji

Last Friday I skipped out of work after lunch w/ several friends of mine from BGI. We hopped the Chuo line limited express train from Shinjuku to Otsuki, and got from there to Kawaguchiko on the Fujikyu line. We then transferred to a bus that took us to Mt Fuji's 5th station, and after a bit of time spent looking at the souvenir shops, we began our ascent:

Here's a view from fairly early in our hike (when we still had a bit of light):


Here's a spot along the trail where folks deposit the bear bells & ribbons from the hiking poles they'd purchased at 5th station, and a few people also added some traditional offerings to the mountain:


Sunset:


During the first evening we hiked for several hours, from about 4:45 until about 7:30. I booked us spots at a hut called "Tori Iso" between 7th and 8th station. Somehow my reservations got lost, but as luck would have it, we added a native Japanese speaker to our group about a week before heading up, and she re-reserved our spots for us. Our lodgings included an all you can eat curry dinner, and a warm, dry, 5.5 ft long plank to lay on and try to sleep, just under the eaves on the hut's 3rd (and highest) tier of bunks.

We ate and drank from about 8 until 9, then passed out until about 11pm at which point I was awakened by heavy rain lashing the roof mere inches from my head, and high winds howling through the eaves. The storm eventually passed, and I flirted with sleep until about 1am. Our group's alarms started going off then, and we got up prepared to resume our ascent. The hut's supervisor, however, told us that it was too windy and cold to make an ascent to the summit, but when we poked our heads out the door of our hut, we saw a constant stream of headlamps heading up the mountain. So after some debate, we disregarded his advice, pulled on our thermal underwear, and gave it a go. Just over 4 hours later, we'd reached the summit:



Here are Glen, Jim and I at the top:



After this picture was taken we found a warming hut, grabbed a round of coffees, downed steaming bowls of ramen, and wandered around for a little bit before meeting back up and beginning our descent.

Turns out we took a wrong turn around 8th station (or, to be more accurate, we failed to take the correct turn) and we ended up at the Gotemba 5th station about 1/3 of the way around the mountain from where we expected to be! Unfazed (at 10:30 am), we ordered a round of beers to celebrate our conquering of the mountain and let Glen sort out how to get us back to Tokyo.

Long story short, it took a different bus and train combo to get us back to Tokyo, but to Tokyo we returned, and a mighty good adventure we'd had too, all things considered.

I've got some video footage that I will be splicing together over the new few days; I'll post it later in the week once I've had some time to get it all worked out.

Dry Ice

During summer in Tokyo, if you buy frozen things at the supermarket, they put a bag of dry ice in amongst the frozen stuff to keep it cool on the way home. A nice touch, and as a bonus, there is dry ice to play with when you get home:

Distaster!

Sorry for not updating in so long. I've discovered Facebook, and it is good.

Perhaps disaster is a bit melodramatic -- tragedy, anyhow. Yesterday on my way to work I missed a shift on my bike... or rather my bike missed a shift, as I'm not entirely sure I should be taking the blame here... anyhow, my derailleur hanger (didn't even know what the heck a derailleur hanger was until yesterday) sheared off of my frame, sending the rear derailleur through the cassette. Of course the rear derailleur can not possibly fit through the cassette, but it deserves an A for its efforts in trying.

Final tally: one broken derailleur hanger, one mangled rear derailleur pulley, one bent chain, one flat tire, and one frustrated bicycle commuter who was late for work!

Here's a pic of the bicycle (yes, that is a plastic bag tied around the derailleur to keep it from bouncing on the pavement as I tried to coast along) and as I alluded to earlier, I got a flat tire too, so after a few blocks I couldn't even coast along the downhills. *sigh*



However, I did get a great picture of Robert this morning while I was taking stock of the situation. A future bicycle mechanic?



I stopped by a bike shop yesterday, shortly after the mishap. The gentleman behind the counter told me he could not fix the bike because it's a Bianchi-specific derailleur hanger, and he can not order them since he's not a Bianchi dealer. *sigh* so I went to the Bianchi shop in Naka-Meguro this morning to see about ordering the part. I got there at 10:51 am. Too bad they don't open till noon! I guess they spend their mornings riding their bikes or something? So my trusty companion and I went to the neighborhood park and discovered that summer is waning; the cicadas are starting to die off:



After playing at the park, we returned to the Bianchi store at noon, only to discover that they don't think they can order my part because my bike, a Bianchi Axis, is not a model that is sold in Japan *sigh*, so I've spent this afternoon searching for derailleur hangers on the Internet with some amount of luck. However, I am going to have to pay $20 shipping for a $20 part. *sigh*. And that's just the hanger... I guess I'll be commuting on my shopping bike for the next few weeks while gathering all of the necessary components to effect the repairs.