Almost at Mt. Fuji
We scheduled our vacation time from work around August due to my schedule at work. We haven’t been back to Japan for three years now and it was time for us to visit our parents. When we were planning on what to do in Japan beside do just family stuff, I came up with 2 plans. One was to attend Okazaki firework festival, which is one of the best in the nation, and to climb Mt. Fuji.
I had a chance to climb Mt. Fuji back 1992, however, typhoon was on the way and I missed my chance then. 15 years later, I was once again attempt to climb Mt. Fuji. To get to Mt. Fuji, we’ve bought bus tour to Mt. Fuji from near by train station. We bought just a ride so that we could climb on our own speed with just two of us without any help. This was ideal since toured climb often goes very slowly.
We took a route from Boston to San Francisco and San Francisco to Nagoya. On the airplane to Nagoya, flight attendant told us that Japan was expecting typhoon. Once we landed safely with a bit of turbulences, my father informed us that typhoon 5 is on the way and it’s very windy out because of it. Our climb was about 4 days away. I was a bit concern about this typhoon, which could be an obstacle to mt. Fuji once again.
We went to see Okazaki firework festival 2 days after our arrival and evidently, we were poured on with wind about half way through thanks to typhoon 5, though we stayed and watched the rest of fireworks. Next day, my father fell ill with high fever, and troubled me if we should continue with our plan for mt. Fuji, however, my younger sister who arrived night before to join us assured me that her and our mother will be enough to watch over our father. Typhoon 5 went to Japan Ocean and would not affect our way anymore.
On Monday, August 6th, we woke up around 6am to get ready. Our meeting place was at the Toyota station at 8:40am, however, in the morning around the area was very busy and heavy traffic due to Toyota motor employees commuting in. We need to get dropped off on time to catch our train bound to Toyota station to make it on time. I always prefer heading out early enough so that obstacles do not delay us if they come our ways. We successfully made to our meeting place 30 minutes early. All we had to do was wait.
When bus arrived, a woman who was in charge of getting people told me that I was with a different company and this was not the bus we needed to get on. Before the bus arrived, I found a man who appeared to be waiting the same bus (mountain stick was a give a way). I found that he was waiting for the same bus booked through different travel agency. I saw him getting on the bus and I was sure that we were supposed to be on that bus. I asked the woman one more time and she told me that I needed to wait for my own bus. After asking her to re-check my name in the list that she had - jus in case - she realized that the bus was the one that we needed to be on. Despite of rough start, rest of the trip went pretty smooth except, of course, the climbing part!
continues...
Posted: August 27, 2007 11:00 pm | 1 comment
Tags: 2007, fuji san, Japan, japanese, mt. fuji, summer
