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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/Amo901 on 2025-08-02 05:59:07+00:00.

I normally hate the heat of summers but Mt Fuji’s climbing season landed in summer and I’d seen videos online about climbing it (Abroad In Japan), and it really interested me so I planned a one week trip to Japan to hang out in Tokyo for a bit and also climb Mt Fuji during the middle of the trip.

I went with three friends, and we all climbed to the summit together. We paid the entrance fee for Mt Fuji online and received QR codes. We booked a hut at the 8th station Taishikan and we were going to take the Yoshida route. None of us were hikers or had any experience hiking, but felt that we were relatively fit. I personally barely do any exercise but my job requires me to walk around for at least 5 hours a day without sitting down so I wasn’t sedentary or anything. That being said, none of us hiked, so we rented equipment from Yamarent. The beginner’s 6 piece set.

July 21st

We woke up at roughly 5:30am, left at 7am and headed to the Yamarent store in Shinjuku. The sizes that we initially ordered were too small for us though, so it took some time to try on new hiking boots and such. Afterwards we rushed to Shinjuku Expressway Bus Terminal to catch our bus to the Fuji Subaru Line 5th station. Right outside of the bus stop there was a Lawson though, so we loaded up on lots of onigiris and boarded our bus at 8am. The ride took roughly 3 hours and we got there at 11am. Once we arrived we hung about for 30 minutes. We knew that acclimating to the altitude was important and its recommended to hang around for an hour or so, but our check-in time for the hut was between 2pm-5pm so we had to start moving soon. Around the 5th station there’s some ads posted around with a QR code that makes you install a Mt Fuji climbing app. It was actually a very helpful app that showed us where we were on the trail and updated us on the time and altitude. To bring back that point about the heat earlier, when we arrived to the 5th station we immediately felt a lot cooler there. It was around 32-34 degrees in Shinjuku but it felt like 28 around the 5th station if I had to estimate. However, the clouds were on and off, covering the sun up. Once the sun started beaming down again, it felt like we were being baked. Sunscreen was super important here. Also, there were signs plastered everywhere saying that bins do not exist on Mt Fuji and all trash must be carried back home with you. This issue will come up again later.

Anyway, at 11:30am, we started our hike. Before heading to the Yoshida trail, there’s a counter where you show them the QR codes you received if you paid the entrance fee online. We received glow in the dark tags that we were required to put somewhere visible on our bodies or backpacks. Once we did that, there were guards at the entrance to Mt Fuji that checked whether your tag was correctly placed, before letting you go on the climb.

The climb itself was pretty strenuous for us. At the start of the hike it’s pretty simple though, a gravel path with a slight incline where you’re pretty much just walking. The views around here are already pretty great though, overlooking forests and lakes, clouds around us. We even saw a deer and her baby roaming around. And even though I had been worried about hiking in summer, the heat wasn’t a problem at all, just when it started baking us as the clouds parted momentarily. However, around the 7th station the difficulty ramps up a lot. The easy to walk path doesn’t exist anymore, and there’s just natural rock formation that you have to take big steps over, or start using your hands or hiking sticks to climb. It can be very easy to fall if you misstep or have bad footing so had to be super careful. Yamarent’s hiking boots were super good though, I was stepping onto rock surfaces that I had no right gripping on to. Also, I’m not sure if the hike brought out some breathing issues I was unaware of, but I found myself huffing and puffing really fast, even though I wasn’t actually tired. After many 5 minute breaks and our onigiri stockpile finished, we made it to our 8th station hut at 4:20pm.

We were served dinner at around 6pm, it was some grilled mackarel, curry and rice, a small salad and a red bean fish cake for dessert. It was a small meal but somehow pretty filling. Stepping out of the hut to go to the bathroom, it was surreal being surrounded by nothing but clouds After we ate, we went straight to bed. We had initially planned to wake up at 12:30am to start hiking again to catch the sunrise, but we overheard plans from other hikers in the hut that planned to leave at 11:30pm instead, so we decided to follow along.

July 22nd (almost)

I only got about 3 hours of sleep. The Taishikan Hut was extremely hospitable, the staff were extremely nice and the food was great, but the sleeping quarters unfortunately were rough around the edges. We didn’t expect luxury at all, we were just happy to be sleeping somewhere at all, but the leather block pillow and mattress was tough to sleep on. And it was like a capsule hotel, so there were neighbours right next to each capsule. Unfortunately there was a really inconsiderate couple talking throughout the night that stopped my sleep, and I lost my temper and yelled at them to be quiet after which they did. But at 11:30pm, we got up, got ready and headed off again. The stretch from the 8th station to the 9th station was also rough, in that the stretch from the 7th station to the 8th station was a painful 2 hours, but this was going to be double the length. But in terms of the incline, it felt about the same. Climbing at 12am, the stars looked incredible and we could see shooting stars from time to time. Leaving the hut at 11:30pm was actually good, because nearing the summit there’s a lot of traffic. We reached the summit at 4:18am, just in time to see the sun rise at 4:35am. We hung out there for about an hour and a half enjoying the corn soup from the vending machines and admiring the view. Once we had our fill, we began the descent at 6am.

The descent was so much worse than the ascent for our group. The entire descent down was the gravel pavement from the earlier 5th station to 6th station stretch, but the gravel was finer and the steep declines would have your feet sliding. Feet being raked across the gravel, all of us were in pain for the next 5 hours. Eventually we made it back to the 5th station at around 12:30pm. Apparently it takes 5 hours on average, but our feet were in so much pain we took a lot of breaks just to let our feet rest. By the end of the hike we had 4 bags packed to the brim with garbage (empty water bottles). During the ascent we bought a lot of water bottles at the various huts lined along the Yoshida Trail beause we hadn’t packed any water beforehand, so we had lots of garbage that just kept piling up as we were hiking and couldn’t dispose of it because of no bins on Mt Fuji. Bring a lot of cash because the huts will milk you dry if you’re not packing a lot of water.

Overall, it was a pretty great experience as a group of people that haven’t hiked at all. The views along the path were stunning, and the weather really worked out in our favour as the hike wasn’t rainy at all and it wasn’t windy at all either. Though it was funny, an hour after we got back down to the 5th station it started thunderstorming and hailing. We met some pretty interesting people along the way (a group of girls that we kept running into along each station, a Spanish father yelling obscenities whenever he checked how many meters were left till the hike was finally over, a man who hiked to the top in a white tuxedo and dress shoes??) and the whole thing was an experience I won’t forget. The vibes are great too, everyone being friendly and having that understanding that we’re all going through a struggle together to reach the top. I’d do it again for sure, maybe another trail, but hearing how the Yoshida Trail is the easiest one, we’d probably have to become more fit before we can take on the others.