Capital of the East at a run

The first natural step for anyone who wants to watch the sunrise from Mt. Fuji is... to google "Climbing Mt. Fuji".

Doing so, you'll find a wealth of outdated websites featuring inaccurate information that is roughly relevant.

That's how we found out there are many trails going to the summit and the most convenient of all for people living in Tokyo is called Kawaguchiko. Trails feature 10 stations, all the way from the feet to the summit of Mt. Fuji and buses go all the way up to Kawaguchiko Trail's fifth station (2300m).

Finding the bus terminal was not easy (we had to ask twice and were tossed all around Shinjuku station). The main room is for buying tickets for buses departing the same day. The reservation counter is hidden quite well, on the left on the second floor behind the small door next to the main room...

I naively assumed the fifth station of the Kawaguchiko trail would have "Kawaguchiko" in its name. Silly me. I should have somehow figured out it would be called "Fuji-san gogome" (or Mt. Fuji 5th station)... It would have been obvious if there was only one trail instead of five but well. Don't try to understand.

At Kawaguchiko Station, we quickly realized the 5th station was still a long way (and more than 2000m alt.) and had to take another bus... Overall, I have a hard time picturing how tourists who can't speak Japanese can find their way to Mt. Fuji on their own ^^'

This is what the Mt. Fuji looks like from the 5th station:

And this is what the station looks like from the beginning of the trail:

It wasn't entirely obvious which way to go... even less so because the trail starts by descending before ascending ^^' But we were reassured when an old Japanese man told us "Ganbatte" (= "Try your best" ^^')...

I'll stop here for today (this post is already late enough as it is...). More photos tomorrow :)