Mt. Fuji

My buddy Fudge was out from Vancouver for the last few weeks and to end his trip he really wanted to climb Fuji. Because I had already done it last year, I wasn't that interested but his incessant whining eventually wore me down.
Mt. Fuji is 3,776 m high, and last erupted in 1707. There are several routes you can take from different points around the mountain, and the one we were taking started at an altitude of 2,200 m. Fuji is high enough that many people experience altitude sickness, and I had it last year, ending up with a booming headache, that being one of the reasons I didn't really want to climb it again.
We had planned to start early Friday evening but when we arrived at Kawaguchiko, one of the bases for the climb, the weather was cloudy and it was raining on the mountain. They told us, however, that the weather for Saturday was looking clear. So we changed our plans, and got a room for the night, and then took a bus to the 5th station (the start point) at 7:30 in the morning. We started climbing about 8:30 and reached the top around 2 in the afternoon. The one downside to this was that we did not see the sunrise from the peak, but this was more than offset by not having to spend 7 or 8 hours hiking in the dark and the rain and the cold.
This was the last weekend of the official season, so the mountain was quite busy. There was a really big group of Americans from the Military base near Yokohama and probably a quarter of the people on the mountain were Westerners, which was weird for me to see, because where I live I see very few foreigners.
At the top of the mountain we saw this tori (gate) in the middle picture, covered with bells on ribbons, left there by hikers over the years.
Partway up the mountain I saw this European guy carrying his mountain bike up! He was going to the top so that he could ride down. Very impressive.
All in all, Fudge had an awesome time, and I enjoyed it also although near the top I could feel my head starting to throb, and by the time I reached the base again, it was a splitting headache, leading me to vow to never do Fuji again! Although I'm sure next summer someone will sucker me in again.