We took a summer break! This post is from August 9, 2025. I remember the first time I laid my eyes on it. I was on the bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo with my family, and towards the end of the trip, as dusk rolled in, I gazed out of my window and, just barely visible, I made out its silhouette. It was a large and brooding figure. It stood silently in the calm air like a stone giant. I found myself glued to the train window, taking in its grandeur. If I had known then that I was going to try and climb it, I might’ve felt fear. But all I felt was amazement. The mountain sat there, almost like a guardian in the dark, and just as dusk turned to night, it disappeared. I was left feeling small.
I will admit, I played basically no role in the planning of the climb. My good friend Jesse and I were fortunate enough to meet two very mountainous Japanese girls at our bouldering gym, who later orchestrated the entire thing. In the weeks leading up to the climb, our group chat would pop up with screenshots of hotel reservations, bus tickets, and vague packing lists. Neither of them had ever climbed the mountain before, but we trusted they knew what they were doing.
Finally, the dawn of the final day came upon us, and, with our backpacks packed, Jesse and I were ready to set off towards Kyoto station. We met down at the kitchen with plenty of time to spare, but as we each realized the various forgotten essentials missing from our packs, we made trips back up to our rooms to retrieve them. Finally, we felt well enough to leave, and so we left.
On the way to the station, we received a message that one of the girls, the more experienced of the two, had brought along a small camping stove and crucible, which she had planned to make ramen with somewhere along our hike. As we got off the train at Kyoto station, and made our way to the bus terminal (not with much time to spare, mind you), I thought about my pack, filled with the PBJs I had made and protein bars I had bought, and I thought of myself, cold and tired on the mountain, and how a steaming cup of ramen would bring me solace and warmth in that moment, which no sandwich ever could. I made a detour in the station towards a convenience store (a near costly mistake, as you will read).
I looked on at the wall of colorful packaging and flavors, and picked one at random. The line wasn’t long, but it was slow. In front of me, an American woman wouldn’t understand the Japanese cashier who struggled to explain that the store had no trash cans, and she would have to carry hers with her. She simply didn’t believe it, but eventually, she gave up and left, and I got up and paid, and we were off again.
By this time, another message had reached the group chat, a photo of the bus terminal map with a station circled in red. I knew that our bus was to depart at 10:56pm, and it was currently 10:49, so with our meeting spot known, we exited the station. The bus terminal area of Kyoto station is outside, and it is a also gigantic, bustling place. Although we had a map and a destination, we struggled to find our bus. I looked at my watch, 10:52, the anxiety was starting to build. We set off in one direction, didn’t think it looked right and turned around. 10:54, the anxiety was turning into panic. We tried crossing the street, but thought that wasn’t right either. Finally, we found ourselves exactly where we started. I looked at my watch again, 10:56. In desperation I tried to call one of the girls, but there was no answer. We were going to miss our bus, all for a stupid 1$ pack of ramen! Our whole trip, gone, because I was thinking with my stomach and not my head. Right at that moment, with Jesse looking to me for what to do next, and me having no answer for him, I turned and saw a bus we had previously overlooked, and standing next to it were two small Japanese girls with two very big packs on their backs. How we didn’t see them before, I have no idea, but when we saw them, they saw us, and calmly waved us over. We were the last four people on the bus, and almost as soon as the doors closed behind us, the bus lurched forward and wayward towards Fuji.
Night busses are something special. I don’t think they’re isolated to Japan, but they are very famous over here. Most people know about Japan’s bullet trains, but fewer know of the $100 price tag a single ticket will run you for a one way trip to Tokyo. So, for those who would rather trade their time for money, the night bus can get you just as far at half the price, but triple the time. Think of your normal, everyday bus, and forget all that. The night bus has three seats per row, one by each window, and a seat in the middle, with an aisle between each seat with enough room to walk down. Our seats had us huddled in the back corner of the bus, and as we sat down, I sighed a huge sigh of relief. The hard part wasn’t over, it hadn’t even started, but it felt like we had already gone through so much. I took a few sleeping pills, because regardless of what my body wanted, I needed to sleep good on this bus. It wasn’t too hard, the seats were surprisingly cozy and they leaned a long way back. There was a foot rest that swiveled out and an outlet for charging, there was even a bathroom on board. As I settled in and dozed off, I dreamed of what tomorrow would look like, and if I was up for the challenge.
Nobody else slept much that night, but luckily, I did. I was gently awoken by the rocking of the bus at about 5:45am, and we were about to arrive in Fuji. Jesse was able to sleep only minutes at a time, and the girls didn’t do much better. They said the bus constantly started and stopped, which made it hard to find a comfortable position. I think I had gotten lucky with the strength of my sleeping pills. One of the girls had brought a bucket of popcorn with them, and there it was by my feet, empty. I was so out of it, I still don’t remember finishing it. In all, the trip took around seven hours.
We got off the bus and there, we were able to see Mt. Fuji for the first time, from a distance. It stood there silently in the sky, watching us. We went into the station to change and consolidate. In the station bathroom, I put on my climbing clothes, brushed my teeth, put on deodorant, and left what I wouldn’t need for the climb in a storage locker. The girls, carrying more than Jesse and I, took much longer to organize their packs. On the way to our second bus, I got two snickers for breakfast. We misjudged how long it would take to get there, and almost missed it (a pattern was beginning to form). It was another two hours to the mountain, and at 6:45am, the bus left the station.
On the ride up I tried to sleep some more, but my mind wouldn’t let me. I was struggling to judge how nervous I should be, and I felt like I was overly anxious. But then again, many people have tried and failed to summit Mt. Fuji. I was comparing myself to those people, and to my friends who had done the climb two days prior, and how my endurance stacked up against everyone else’s. It was tough to judge, and I remained nervous as I drifted off to sleep again, but the switchbacks made it very difficult.
The second bus took us surprisingly far up the mountain, all the way up to the treeline. While planning, the girls opted for the shortest and steepest of the four available trails, because we were trying to climb all the way up and back down in a single day. Most people stay the night in one of the many rest houses along the mountain, giving them more time to climb. This is where a lot of my anxiety came from: time. I felt I was strong enough, but was I fast enough?
It was 8:10 when we all got off the bus, and shortly thereafter we started our climb. I remember looking up at the peak and thinking it didn’t look so far away, and looking down at the view, it already seemed like we had come so far.
By 9:50, I was feeling pretty great. I was outpacing my group, and maybe my water supply. It was tough to judge how much of the climb was left, because the peak always seemed like it was right there. We all stopped at rest house seven, where Jesse got his wooden walking stick stamped. Each rest house has its own wood burn stamp that they give, leaving you with a stick filled with them by the time the climb was over. I knew there was a rest house eight, but I wasn’t sure about nine. I hadn’t eaten anything other than a protein bar and one of my snickers. We continued on.
Another hour later, at 3010 meters up, we were really above the clouds. I felt good, albeit my ears were getting a bit cold without a hat, and my water was lower than it should’ve been, but I felt good. We stopped for a while to eat some snacks, and knowing of the altitude sickness that was likely to come, I took some pain meds in preparation. The path had just started to get much steeper, so slowly, we trudged on.
It was almost noon when we reached rest house eight, and I was far enough ahead of the pack to have time to settle in and eat one of the sandwiches I had made. It was the second most scenic sandwich eating experience I’ve ever had. I had the tendency to get excited and really pick up my pace whenever I got close to the next rest house, which was honestly a pretty huge waste of energy because I would be so exhausted once I reached it, causing me to blow through much of my water supply. Half of it was gone at this point. As I sat and waited for the group, I thought about how much further we had. The way up still seemed to look exactly as it did from the last rest house. I focused on my sandwich until the others arrived, and it was upwards and onwards from there.
At about 12:30, I had reached rest house 9. I was feeling absolutely dog-tired, the last hour was by far the hardest yet. I started climbing more deliberately, and slowly. If I didn’t think about it, my pace would speed up and I would get exhausted. I started making my steps three times as small, so I was really just shuffling up the mountain. We were close enough to the summit to just barely make out the silhouette of people walking along the edge of the volcano’s crater. We stayed at this rest house for a long time, not only because we needed it, but also because of Brent. Brent was an eccentric Arizona man, who seemed to recognize Jesse and I as being Americans too, and took it as an invitation to tell us his life story. I personally enjoyed listening, but I could tell the girls, who didn’t understand a word of it, were eager to keep moving, so I started weaning my way out of the conversation (which was really more of a lecture).
The view from the top was amazing. It was almost hard to believe we were still on land, it felt more like looking out of an airplane window than anything else. I had reached the top before the others, and as I waited, I climbed a precariously put boulder, and began eating my other sandwich. It was the most scenic sandwich eating experience I’ve ever had. Once the others made it, we set up our little post overlooking the crater, as to get away from the wind. One of the girls set up her little stove, and began boiling water. Everyone brought ramen except for Jesse, who didn’t seem to mind, and was more focused on taking a nap. We ate, watched, and waited, and eventually felt like it was about time to start heading back. Begrudgingly, we began our descent.
It was 4:00 by the time we passed rest house nine on the way down. I had to pony up and buy some of the overpriced water they had there, as I had already run out. There are vending machines at every stop, which were surprisingly well stocked. I wonder whose job that is.
The rest of the way down was a slog, and a blur. We learned that the last bus departed at 6:30, so to avoid paying for the 100$ taxi back into Fuji, we picked up the pace. It had taken us 5 hours to reach the summit, and we had just 3 to get all the way back down. I put in a podcast, stole Jesse’s walking stick, and locked in.
By the time I had reached the bottom, I almost couldn’t believe it. I had entered such a deep flow state that the only thought in my head for the past two hours was about taking my next step down the mountain. At the bus terminal, the numbness in my legs, knees, and back suddenly faded and I could feel how much they hurt. The others were far behind me, and I was scared they wouldn’t make it. I went over and stood by the bus, waiting anxiously for them to walk out of the trees. It was 6:29 by the time they finally made it, and without a second thought, or a minute to spare, I sat down, enjoyed my last Snickers, and fell asleep.
By some mistake, the bus was actually headed for a completely different town, so when I woke up (covered in chocolate from the melted Snickers on my lap) expecting to be at our hotel, I was disappointed to find that there was another hour and a half before we would be there. It was almost 8pm at this point, and I was beat. My contacts were dry and stuck to my eyes, my clothes were sealed to my body with sweat, I felt and looked like a mess. As we waited for our train in that hot, muggy station, all I could think about was the onsen.
Onsens are very popular in Japan. They’re basically like spas, with hot pools, cold plunges, and saunas. In the beginning, they were all heated geothermally, but they got so popular that they began building ones heated by machines. Because they’re so popular, you can’t really go far without running into one. In our case, we didn’t need to go anywhere at all, there was one on the top floor of our hotel. When we finally got to our room, it was 9:30pm, almost a full day since we got on the night bus, and more than twelve hours since we began climbing. Everything I wore was coated with a layer of volcanic dirt, especially my shoes and feet. Jesse and I took little time dropping off our bags in our room, rinsing off quickly, grabbing our complimentary hotel pajamas, before heading up to the onsen. The water burned in the best way. We had gotten tremendously sunburned, but Jesse, wearing only shorts and a short sleeve, got the worst of it. His neck began to look and feel more like leather as the days went on. Still, it was one of the most relaxing and rewarding moments we’d ever experienced, as our tension, both physical and mental, both dissolved in the hot water.
DU Abroad 