Mount Fuji

Our climb up Fuji-san started around 1045pm Tuesday night, arriving at the summit for sunrise at 5am. Perfect timing in the end - there were so many people climbing for sunrise that we were queuing up the last stretch, but the sun rose just as we arrived up top.

The ascent is lined with stations every few hundred meters where people can get their hiking sticks stamped, rest and buy a limited selection of stuff:

The summit (at 3,776m) has a few small buildings on it, including a post office where you can send special post cards. The crater is huge, takes about an hour to walk around it - the volcano last erupted in 1706. This being Japan, they even have some vending machines up there:

Mountain summit refreshment...

The Crater

The Crater

I thought the hiking sticks were great - here's mine after the climb (I think there's a way I can send it home, which I'll try doing):

One of the strangest things was the extreme temperature change - it was sub-zero at the summit with icicles covering rocks, then an hour later on the descent it was back to around 25 C. The cloud cover took a while to get back under - unfortunately this stopped us getting a good view of Tokyo:

All in all, great success, and back down to the halfway point for 10am: