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as it turned out, we had made it up in 5:15, which wasn’t all that horrible! we rested a little bit but not for long because the cold was being blasted through our clothing by the strong wind. so we started the long descent. it felt a lot faster (and was, of course) than the ascent, and we practically zoomed by places that had been particularly hard on the way up. of course, the going was hard on the old knees, and we had to rest occasionally just so all our joints wouldn’t give out. but, it was much nicer than going up, and i was able to do some jogging now and then to get the blood flowing and muscles moving. ...

for me, the rest of the trip (the 21 - 24 of june) was somewhat lost in the shadow of mt. fuji, and the length of the description of this might lend itself to that interpretation as well. however, there were a lot of things worth mentioning about it, and i’d say that most of my cultural experiences and philosophical thoughts about japan and japanese culture happened in that time. ...

we kept a better pace all the way up the first round of switchbacks up to the 7th station, where we lunched on trail mix and had a rest. there i took this picture of the next leg of the journey: [ up from 7th station]. you’ll notice that the terrain changes a bit there from volcanic scree to large, clumpy conglomerates of rock which one had to climb over. that was definitely my favorite part of the climb: some 4th-class scrambling over really interesting rock formations. and, since i could now use my hands and arm muscles, my feet got a bit of a break. i found myself getting way too far ahead of the other three, however, and decided to slow down. it was at that point that the wind begain getting pretty bad. it was sustained, as i said, but the gusts were what really took us by surprise. if you weren’t holding on to something when they hit, you were easily blown off your feet. and, the wind carried with it tons of little dust particles and rocks which did there best to scrape the skin off our faces. ...

the drive to 5th station took longer than expected, but at the end of it we found ourselves getting out of mrs. takahashi’s car at an elevation of about 5,600 ft. at this height and because of the situation of the 5th station, the wind was a constant, deafening roar, with gusts that made it hard to stand even on flat cement. my dad and i worried about this momentarily, wondering how much worse it would be on the tricky upper slopes, but put it out of our minds. and, so as not to lose time, we had a quick prayer with mrs. takahashi for safety, and said our thank-yous and goodbyes. then we cinched up all our straps, configured our hydration packs for hiking, and set off on the trail. despite the wind, it was a sunny 80 degrees at the 5th station (much better than the balmy and sweaty 95 of tokyo), the trail was not to steep, and life was good! around then i noticed an interesting atmospheric oddity–a little cyclonic type cloud formation that hovered a certain distance off fuji, and just kept rotating and rotating. here’s a picture: [ our cyclonic friend]. that cloud formation stayed there for just about the entire duration of our extent, rotating happily, and i can’t figure out why it was there. anyway. ...

the next day, friday, was another early morning. we caught our bus at shinjuku at 7am and settled in for the 2-hour ride. on the trip we made friends with a canadian guy named michael, who was planning on climbing the mountain that day. he told us of an american he met in the tokyo streets who’d done it about a week previously, and who had said it was certainly doable. in fact, this american had made it up the mountain in 3 hours (much less than the average 5.5 - 6 up), and had not, of course, been eaten by the forest, fallen hundreds of feet down ice cracks, or been blown off the mountain by winds. this report confirmed my suspicions that the mountain wasn’t all that bad, and made my dad more willing to try for the summit if we got the opportunity. the rest of the ride we talked to michael about various things and had a decent time in the cramped seats. i also got this picture of fuji from the bus, unfortunately the only one of the whole mountain, since it was dark when we were again far enough away to see the whole thing: [ view of fuji from bus window]. as you can see, there was a layer of clouds covering the top of the mountain. what you can’t see is that these clouds were swirling very visbly around the mountain, like a miniature hurricane. and they were going fast. it was actually quite unreal, and made me wonder what it would feel like on the summit, in those winds and clouds, if we tried for it. ...

we generally ate our dinners with the fukudas and takashi’s mother at her place. every meal was an adventure, as any number of unfamiliar items were continually placed in front of me. i ate everything, near enough, with a minimal of facial muscle distortion, and soon began to distinguish what sorts of things i liked and what i didn’t. japanese food is very good. the first night there my dad and i went to bed early, due to jet lag, and woke up accordingly early on thursday morning. that day we went to work with takashi at the wycliffe center [ takashi and my dad on the way to the station to go to the center]. (i should actually put “center” in scare quotes, since it was a one-room office with a living quarters directly above). my dad wanted to see the office for obvious reasons, and i was excited to see how wycliffe was doing things in other parts of the world (it’s really a fascinating organization, with divisions in most of the world’s countries). there are 5 or 6 people that work in wycliffe japan, of which takashi is the director. we hung around the office for a bit, and i got to know some of the employees a bit. i also learned how to type japanese on a windows computer, which was, to say the least, fascinating. i really wish english had as interesting a writing system. ...

as i said, we got up early on tuesday. the sun was just beginning to rise in florida, [ sunrise from my driveway] and we drove to the airport. i was looking forward to the flying to japan possibly more than the being there, because we were flying first class on all our domestic flights and business class on our international legs. you see, my dad is executive platinum with american airlines (i happen to be platinum, myself), and so every year he gets a number of free class-of-service upgrade coupons. we were able to use some of these, and let me tell you: flying business class internationally is about 75 billion times as good as flying coach. but we’ll get to that later. ...

note 1: i will include links to pictures throughout, enclosed by “[” and “]”. be sure to check these out for the full experience! note 2: this will be in nine(!) parts, because it is too long to post as one blogger entry (they must have put a new size limit in the new blogger version). but, i will post them backwards, so that part 1 appears first, and part 2 second, and part 3 third, and so on. in other words, read in the order they appear on the page. note 3: this will be very long. in fact, it is about 7800 words and took me upwards of 5 hours to write. but i haven’t made you read anything in a while anyway, so suck it up. and who knows, maybe it will actually be worth reading! part i: preparation ...

i am alive! (all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding…) and i am back from japan. it was a great trip, and i have great stories and great pictures to share. unfortunately, i took the latter half of last week to do just about everything except blog, and now i have started working full-time. still, with japan and other recent events, so many exciting things are happening in my world at this time that i can’t afford to leave you out of the loop. look for some real posts soon, in which i will document all said awesomeness. ...

goodbye for 7 days! i will write after i return from japan.