In the morning of the third day of our trip, while C was having a hot spring bath (in Japanese), I packed my bags. Staying in a tent was quite a fun, I want to do it again. If we come back to this camp site, it might be nice to do BBQ with a nice ocean view. The nice young lady from the camp site gave us a lift to Utoro Onsen Terminal.

On the second day of our Shiretoko trip (our third wedding anniversary), we couldn't be bothered to either walk for 50min or wait for a bus, so we hitchhiked along the coast to Shiretoko Shizen Centre (in Japanese). Then we walked to see Furepe ('maiden's tears') Waterfall. On the way there, we saw a deer family eating their lunch. I think I've never seen wild animals this close-up. After we came back to Shizen Centre, we took a bus to the Kamuiwakka ('water of the gods') Falls. We were looking forward to take a bath in the hot spring pool on top of the warm waterfall.

The road from Shiretoko Five Lakes to the Kamuiwakka falls has been closed to private traffic until 2010, except between July and September 20. We were lucky to catch the last day of the service!

Apart from Sapporo, we also went to the Shiretoko Peninsula, which was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites this Summer. Hokkaido is huge, so we spent a long time on trains and buses. It took us 6 hours and 59 minutes from Sapporo to Shiretoko Peninsula. There are also flights to the Memanbetsu airport, which I completely forgot about.

If I go on a trip, eating the local food is one of the things really look forward to and we had lots of nice Hokkaido food. Hokkaido is very famous for crab, sea urchin, salmon eggs, abalone etc. Even though we both don't like them much, it's hard (or expensive) to find the same quality in Tokyo, so I ate those foods. I still didn't think that they were great... but I enjoyed eating salmon, sweet corn and Mongolian mutton BBQ, and drinking Sapporo Beer!

When we were staying in Sapporo, we decided to go to a coffee shop called 'koe' ('voice'), about which I read (in Japanese) on Sapporo blogger Kakako's Shin Nichijo-teki Henteko Catalogue. The coffee shop looked very unique from the outside, so we were hesitating a little bit, but we found out that the shop owner was a nice middle-aged woman and the shop had been open for 40 years.

O from C's office is leaving Japan next week. So we had a good-bye party at a Korean restaurant in Ebisu. I felt that it was still too early to eat chigae (hot pot dishes), but it was tasty, even though I had to sweat a lot. I also tried a sip of mackoli, a traditional Korean rice wine, and I thought that it was similar to Indian lassi mixed with rice wine.

I haven't updated LDK because we were on a late summer holiday in Hokkaido! After returning to Tokyo, we went to the Tokyo Oktoberfest in Hibiya. We arrived there around 5:30pm, and there were massive queues for the sausage stall and the German beer stall. It was approximately 30-50 minutes of waiting time. How can we get drunk if we have to queue like this? I gave up queueing and went to the Asahi beer stall, but Löwenbräu was sold out, too. We had Japanese beer at the German beer festival, how sad! But C seemed to enjoy it, so it was OK. In Munich, strong ladies dressed up like this and carrying lots of big beer glasses come to all the tables to sell beers. How wonderful!

On the weekend, C went to a local bakery to get breakfast. He told me (he lied to me) that he thought he had bought an Olive and Camembert sandwich, but it was a Blueberry and Cream cheese sandwich! The combination of blueberry, cream cheese, ham and pastrami was quite nice! This bakery is owned by Gastronomy Research Laboratory Co., Ltd.

On Sunday afternoon, there was a crazy thunderstorm just as I was about to leave our flat. I had an appointment, so I couldn't wait for long. So I gave up and went to vote in the lower house elections at the local elementary school. I was soaking wet. My umbrella didn't really help! I hurried to Harajuku and met up with C and C's friend. It seemed like the rain had gone, but as soon as we arrived at the main building of Meiji Shrine it started raining buckets, so we stayed there for quite a while. It was kind of nice and beautiful.

It's fig season. I love figs, no matter how it is cooked, but I think eating fresh figs in season is the best way of eating. C hates dried fig, because of the texture and the sweetness. So he refused to try this fresh fig and ham. But after his first bite, he realised how fresh and juicy it is! See, I told you it will be so delicious!

This is the last entry of the long long Mt Fuji series! I don't think that I will climb Mt Fuji again, but I will list up my equipment list for my memories. I didn't use much of the food I took with me, so if you don't like to carry a heavy bag, I recommend that you buy some instant food and drinks at the mountain huts (but I think they open only in July and August). The prices are as high as Mt Fuji, so you need to take some cash with you. The walking stick costs ¥1,000 and all the stamps for my stick cost ¥3,300. I also spent ¥6,500 to stay at the mountain hut and about ¥1,500 for plastic PET bottles of water and tea.

At Kusushi Shrine, we got red ink stamps (¥300) instead of burnt ones. I also received a goshuin (red ink seal), it was ¥1,000. Our friend K was going to make real espresso for us, but the wind was too strong to use the camping stove, so we gave up! Our plan was to add some Eternal Icicles and bourbon to the espresso! It takes about 1.5 hours to walk along the crater rim, but we decided to descend Mt Fuji before getting completely exhausted!

The hotel worker said: 'If you are an avarage person, it takes 1.5 hours to 2 hours to get to the summit from here'. So we left the Fujisan Hotel (3400m) at 02:20. There were so many climbers outside, they had been climbing all night, I guess. Everyone‘s goal is to view the sun rise on the summit around 5am! I could see lots of stars in the sky, and a queue of head lamps on the way to the summit. The queue was just a single line, the right side of the queue was free for faster climbers (usually foreigners) and there was enough space between people. It wasn't as annoying as it sounds. I decided to join the slow queue and my rhythm was to take three steps, then look at the sky and breathe deeply, then taking another three steps, then try to find shooting stars, and so on. The sky was incredibly beautiful, but I felt stupid because it reminded me of a planetarium!

When I arrived at Fujisan Hotel (these are their stamps), about 20 minutes after C and our friend K, I was completely exhausted. I entered the hut and put down my bag and stick, and as soon as I sat down on a bench, I had to pay (about) ¥6,500 for one night stay including dinner. Back to reality.

I'm getting a little bit bored with writing Mt Fuji entries, and I felt the same during our climb from the 7th (2700m) to the 8th (3020m) station. Although we climbed for hours, the scenery didn't change and the summit was still so far away. But when I looked down, I could see how far we had climbed. There were two songs repeating in my head. One was a 4.54 million sales kid song from the 70's, Swim! Taiyaki kun (Taiyaki is a fish-shaped sweet), and the other was Gandhara by Godaigo (the ending theme of 'Saiyuuki', a Japanese TV series known as 'MONKEY', also from the 70s). Both songs are not very uplifting... I wasn't hungry but it's important to take energy, so I had a break at each of the mountain huts. I felt that there was less and less oxgen, so I opened my oxygen spray can and breathed extra oxygen. But it has no taste and no smell, so I don't know if I was actually breathing pure oxgen! At 17:30, we reached the 8th station (3020m). It was getting dark. At 19:30 we finally arrived at the hut called 'Fujisan Hotel' (which is not really a hotel). It had been 5 hours and 20 minutes from the starting point.

We started to climb the mountain at 14:10, still full of energy. We saw a notice board very near starting point, its English text looked a little bit sad. As we continued climbing, we saw lots of people climbing down who looked completely worn‐out and I couldn't say 'hello' to them (we have to greet people on the mountain). It was scary to think that we might feel like that tomorrow! The 6th station (2390m) was quite easy and quick to reach and staff from Mt Fuji Safty Guidance Centre were handing out notices and a simple map. There are no huts on the 6th station, and we didn't want to let our body cool down, so we continued climbing. It was 15:30 when we reached the first hut on the 7th station, called 'Hanagoya'. These are the stamps they burnt on our sticks.

Our friend K, C and I took a highway bus (in Japanese) to Fuji fifth station (¥2,600 for a single trip) from Shinjuku at 10:55. The bus was fully packed but our reserved seats in the back were quite spacious, it was a comfortable journey. On the way to Mt Fuji, we ate a nice breakfast/lunch, which we bought at Keio department store (in Japanese) in Shinjuku, we saw FUJIYAMA in Fuji-Q HighLand, and at 13:20 we arrived at Mt Fuji 5th Station for the Lake Kawaguchi route (2305m). The sun was strong and hot, burning my skin, but the air was very cold. I've never experienced this weird sensation.