I was having way too much sake that night. At a noisy izakaya on a Tokyo backstreet, my friend Yuji and I kept refilling each other's cups. After we graduated from college, Yuji moved back to Japan and I to Toronto. Clinking cups with him that night took me back to the days when we used to do a lot of silly things together.
I quaffed another shot of the potent junmai-shu sake and blurted out: 'You and I, let's climb Mount Fuji tomorrow.' It was the alcohol talking. Yuji, his face as red as a ripe tomato, hit back with the two most dangerous words in the English language: 'Why not?' That's how it all started, 15 years ago.
Hours later and still nursing our hangovers, Yuji and I boarded the earliest bus from Tokyo to Kawaguchi-ko, the most popular starting point for the climb. Mount Fuji is divided into 10 'stations' from base to summit, and there at the fifth station base camp we found hordes of climbers stuffing supplies into their backpacks. All we had were our windbreakers and baseball caps. It was like bringing a pocket knife to a gunfight. Neither of us knew anything about a climb that was about to turn into a near-death experience.
Going up Mount Fuji requires neither mountaineering gear nor experience. Along the way, we saw children and their grandparents strolling about as of it was a family day at the park. The wholesomeness of it all gave us a false sense of security. What we didn't know was that everyone except us had a winter jacket, a raincoat and a flashlight tucked neatly inside their outdoor backpacks, ready to be deployed should the weather suddenly turn. What we also didn't know was that we could have easily died from hypothermia if we had taken our trip a few weeks earlier when it was still snowing at the summit.
It took us seven hours to get to the top. At the 10th station, we were greeted by a torii gate and breathtaking views of lakes and valleys beneath the clouds. Our hangover and exhaustion gave way to awe and euphoria. With drifting clouds and red rocks at our feet, even the icy wind chill couldn't dampen our spirits. We walked along the crater rim, like astronauts exploring an alien planet. At the very tip of the ancient volcano, it was where Mother Nature met Father Time and where beauty blended with mythology.
As if time goes by faster at high altitudes, the sun began to set after we had barely completed the crater circuit. 'We must go now,' Yuji warned with uncharacteristic sternness. Whoever told us that the descent took only two hours had lied, for we were still somewhere between the eighth and the seventh stations when the moon came out. Without a flashlight, we had to negotiate the treacherous sand trail in complete darkness. We took off our jackets so that our white T-shirts would catch a bit of moonlight. And whenever the trail began to narrow, we got down on all fours and began to crawl. One wrong step and we would have fallen over the cliff. To lighten things up, Yuji told me that only four people die climbing Mount Fuji every year. Cold comfort. For a good hour, we screamed 'tasukete [help]' like lost puppies until we ran into an old couple and followed them all the way back to base camp. 'Why are you up here in the dark without a flashlight? Where are your backpacks?' the husband asked Yuri in Japanese. He continued his interrogation: 'You kids are either very brave or very stupid. Which is it?' Before Yuji had a chance to answer, the old man started to chuckle and his wife offered us a drink of water. I've never told my parents what really happened 15 years ago and how close they were to getting a sombre call from Japanese police.
