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Japan Climbing Mount Fuji in a record time to catch the bus

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Next story: Drinking beer and eating frog with the son of the designer of the Nissan GTR
author
Johan Kruseman
Updated on 18 September 2024


After the mountains, I visited Osaka and Kyoto. What took me 10 hours for 250 km in Mongolia, I covered here in 1 hour. And it‘s almost unbelievable that those bullet trains depart every 10 minutes and zoom past at 250 km/h.
On my way to Mount Fuji, I could once again enjoy the absurdly efficient transportation system. I covered the first 360 km on the bullet train in 2 hours (beginner‘s mistake: accidentally took the local bullet train, so it had to brake hard every time it reached 250 km/h to stop at the next small station, but that‘s still an average of Amsterdam-Groningen in one hour; not bad for a local train).

The next day, I took the first bus to the base of Mount Fuji. Unfortunately, it was just off-season, so there were fewer buses running, and the time between the first bus there and the last bus back was just not enough to climb up and down Mount Fuji.

To make matters worse, the bus on the way there was an hour late, so I had to climb Fuji at a record pace. Luckily, there wasn‘t much to see along the way. While Mount Fuji shines with beauty from a distance in spring (pink blossoms in the foreground and a snow-capped perfect volcano in the background), from a distance of just two meters in the summer, it‘s just one big asphalt mountain. That allowed me to set my personal record and complete the climb from 2300 meters to 3776 within three hours, plus a little over 90 minutes for the descent.

However, when I reached the top, it was very inconvenient that they had placed the highest point on the other side of the mountain. And crossing straight over wasn‘t possible because they had carved out a giant crater in the middle. Overall, the climb was still an absolute highlight: together with thousands of others, there was a constant stream of people going up and down the mountain, day and night, and being a small part of that, even though you feel like a king when you reach the top and rise above the clouds.

 


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Traveled route: Nagoya, Tokio, Mount Fuji, Japanese Alps, Takayama, Kioto, Osaka
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Photographed by: Johan Kruseman
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Japan

Did this story inspire you to go to Japan? Read more on what Japan has to offer, what the best months are for visiting and check the handy links for backpacking there.
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