72 hours in Tokyo

Thwarted in her attempt to reach the summit of Mt Fuji for the second time, spends three eventful days in the metropolis

AfeW days before our flight to tokyo, our group leader Azlee Mustaffa posted not-so-good news on his facebook account regarding our fuji-san climbing expedition. the post had a picture of a handwritten notice in Japanese and english that read, “due to strong winds, climbing is permitted up to the 8th station of Mt fuji.”

then, he shared a newslink with a comment that a typhoon was heading for the land of the rising sun.

i prayed hard that there would not be strong winds at fujikawaghuciko, the resort town at the northern foot of Mount fuji when we were scheduled to climb the mountain. the weather didn’t look promising right until the day we headed to Kuala lumpur international Airport for our flight to narita Airport.

While some passengers were worried about their flights to and from narita, the five of us were more concerned about whether we could hike up the mountain.

that morning, narita Airport welcomed us with gloomy weather. Maybe it was too early to tell, we consoled ourselves. then halfway to fujikawaghuciko, it started to rain. not all the way, but the bus driver drove through heavy rain until we reached our destination.

We didn’t know how bad it was until we got down from the bus. strong winds accompanied the rain. “don’t tell me this is the typhoon,” i asked Azlee, who fetched us from Kawaghuciko Bus station.

“it’s been raining the past two days. hopefully it will stop today, so we can proceed with our plan,” he said.

But it didn’t. it rained cats and dogs with strong winds, so strong it blew a huge air-conditioner unit off a wall of the opposite building, leaving it dangling.

it was still raining when we settled down for the night in a tatami room at Koe house.