It is the season to climb Mt. Fuji so pack a warm jacket and hop the bus from Shinjuku. At least, that was the route we took back 1998, on a trip that found us climbing Fuji overnight to watch the sunrise.

We didn’t set any world records running up Fuji; the bus arrived at the foot of Fuji at about 4:00pm. We snacked on the local speciality of udon with mountain vegetables. Not wanting to wait for the next bus to the fifth station, we grabbed a cab who cheerfully took us up for a nifty 9,000 yen.

At the fifth station, we purchased the usual climbing paraphenalia. The best investment was in two bottles of oxygen, and second best was in a nifty headlamp for my fellow clamberer.

The march of progress has improved technology, and the new LED flashlights weigh even less and run far longer than the incandescent ones.

The climb went through the night. There are plenty of places to stop and take a breather, to drink some coffee and slurp more noodles. But you might want to avoid the available benjo because they were, well, for lack of a better word, a bit redolent.

I found the oxygen bottles to be a godsend. 12,000 feet is a lot more than the 0 in Tokyo, and it takes a lot of respiration to climb Fuji-san. I didn’t feel the cold until we were in the upper reaches; in fact, with all of the exercise, I was warm enough without the jacket until just before the summit.

We reached the summit at an ideal time, just before sunrise:

We all watched. I was tired; my oxygen was finished, it had been a hard trek up the mountain. It was cold. But the coffee along the way had made a big difference. Trekkers who had not made it to the summit were strung below us, but our early leaving time had given us good margin.

And the light only grew better; it was a glorious morning, and we descended far quicker than we had ascended. In retrospect, it was foolishly dangerous, but we choose a random, scree-filled route down.

I have always loved a fast descent, and it was dangerous fun slip-sliding the scree; at the bottom, we found a small store that served ice cream to the weary travellers. Eventually, we called a taxi which took us somewhere that had a train station.

Unless you are confident about maneuvering about Japan, I wouldn’t recommend that you make any ascent or descent except by the most standard paths, and certainly never explore hike by yourself. It is all too easy to damage an ankle or take a tumble, or even have the heights themselves affect you.

And the answer to the perennial question is: yes, there is a soft-drink machine at the top of Mt. Fuji. It is, after all, the quintessence of Japan.