We left Tokyo late and caught a train to Fuji instead of hitching. As we rode further out of the city, snow started to pop up in larger areas. My nerves spiked as I thought of the Continental Divide trail and how tough it had been to hike through that snow. I tried to soak in all of the heat from our heated seats on the train before it stopped and we had to get out. It was already dark by then but we hiked out of town and up a snow covered ridge. Once we got to the top and huge gondola station was settled there for those who couldn't make the 1km trek up. We found an elevated viewing platform and spread out our sleeping bags to cowboy camp under the stars. Even in my bag, I was cold. I started putting on every layer I had in my pack but I couldn't warm up. We drank some hot soup and then layed down for the night. I maybe slept for a total of ten minutes until about 1 am when I had to go to the bathroom. I struggled, not wanting to get out of my sleeping bag. Did I really have to go that bad? I did. I jumped out of my bag and half threw on my shoes and stumbled to the stairs. Mid stream, I noticed a red light on the building beside me. A camera. Great. I waved, pulled up my pants and ran back up to the platform. We were woken up again at 3am to snow starting to fall on us. We grabbed all of our gear and ran for the nearest cover which happened to be at the top of the gondola. We set up the tent and crawled in. It was slightly warmer inside the tent but not by much. I tried to take a sip of water but my bottle had frozen. The next time I opened my eyes the sun was out. The sound of gears moving began and we realized that the gondola was starting to move. We jumped out and started throwing things in our bags. Flashes of us getting arrested for trespassing in a foreign country crossed my mind. Just as the first tram reached the top, we got the last bits into our bags.
Luckily, the first one was empty so we relaxed a bit and enjoyed the view of Mt. Fuji. We started to head down the slope which had iced over overnight. My feet came out from underneath me and my face went straight for a bush. A felt a stick jab into my eyelid and settle underneath my eye. I quickly pulled away but the damage was done in the form of an inch long scratch just under my pupil. Moose kept saying how lucky I was that it hadn't hit me higher but I didn't feel that way. A few falls later, we were down the mountain and back into town where I nursed my injury with coffee and chocolate cake. (it wasn't that bad, I just wanted cake). I didn't know then that those wouldn't be the last stairs I'd fall down that day. This place is icy! We decided we'd stay inside that night and booked a tiny cabin on a lake at the base of Mt. Fuji. To get there we'd try our hand at hitch hiking for the first time in Japan. After a few stern looks and about 20 cars, a tiny woman in a van pulled over and let us in. We told her where we were headed and she seemed to know the place well. We couldn't communicate but she took us right to the spot, even stopping and going in with us to grab a cup of tea. We found out she knew the owners well and they laughed about us trying to hitch hike. That night we warmed up our frozen extremities and watched night fall on the lake in front of us. It finally felt like a vacation. The next day we woke up and hopped on a pair of bikes to ride to an ancient city with one of the best views of fuji we'd seen yet.
We had a blast walking through the thatched roof city and taking tons of pictures. Outside people were selling a bunch of traditional food including whole fish on a stick. We decided to pass but it did smell delicious. We stayed another night with the wonderful couple at the hotel before heading back to the train station. We hopped on a bus to get back to Tokyo and what was a 2 hour ride turned into 4 hours. Exhausted, we got off the bus into a crazy part of Tokyo. It was overwhelming, overcrowded, and loud. We found the cheapest place we could to sleep and headed over there. We opened a green door to a tiny staircase and had to take our packs off in order to enter. There were two Korean boys there and they told us our bed was on the third floor. Packed into the tiny apartment were two bunk beds and you had to crawl to get to them. There was trash all over the floors and most of the beds had already been slept in. We found one that looked the cleanest, pulled out our sleeping bags and climbed into one bunk. There was no mattress and you could feel the metal bars keeping the bed up. A few hours after falling asleep, 4 men came in saying they had 4 beds in the place that night. We pretended to be asleep and they eventually left talking about how bad the place was. We'd see them again the next morning so they could tell us that we were in the wrong spot and take pictures of the place.
Unfortunately, we were right where we were supposed to be. We left early, claustrophobic and tired. We walked around the city a bit more before catching a train to the airport and flying down to the island of Shikoku. There we would check out the 1400km pilgrimage that had been on my mind for a while. We hoped for better days.
