We came back OK from Mt Fuji on Monday afternoon. My lips are sunburnt and my quadriceps femoris were hurting yesterday. I don't think I will climb Mt Fuji again, but I can say that I seriously enjoyed climbing it. I was worried about altitude sickness, but I didn't suffer from it. I can't believe that the weather was nice all the time and that we could see the beautiful sunrise from the summit. And that we managed to climb down on our own (we didn't need to ask for help from horses). Maybe it helped me that I've been swimming 2km a day these days. On the day before our Fuji trip, C found Fuji beer in a shop and he was happy to drink it, but I didn't drink it. I was very excited to climb Fuji, and also very nervous at the same time.

I know that lots of Japanese people think that Mt Fuji is good for viewing, not for climbing, and I was one of them. Even though it is beautiful from far away, I imagined Mt Fuji as an ugly volcanic mountain, full of rubbish everwhere, with smelly, dirty toilets. I had no knowledge about climbing Mt Fuji, so I didn't know that there are four main routes to the summit, that each route is divided into ten stations (goume in Japanese), that the hiking routes start at about 2300m (fifth station) and that most people take a car or a bus to the fifth station. I, normally a very indoors person, will write some entries about what I saw and thought at Mt Fuji for next few days.