Friday, January 7, 2011

Planning Stage 03: Mt. Fuji.

What's a trip to Japan without seeing Mt. Fuji?

I really wanted to climb it, at least a little bit, but I just had no idea how it worked at all.  I mean, how cool would that be?  To say that I actually stood on Mt. Fuji.  That's mainly because I seriously thought there was some sort of easy-to-walk-to place low on the mountain that everyone could visit whenever they wanted.

So wrong.

If you climb Mt. Fuji, you climb Mt. Fuji, all the way to the top.  It takes about 8 hours and a ridiculous amount of special climbing gear.

I am in no way a climber.  I don't climb mountains for a reason.  It's cold.  And the equipment you need is expensive, and you need a lot of it.

Not that Mt. Fuji is open for climbing business in May anyway.  I would have to go in July/August to actually be able to have the choice to climb.

But researching visitor options for getting on Mt. Fuji was probably a good thing, because I've come to realize that planning this trip is going to be a lot more complicated than I expected.  There are a lot of things I want to do and see, and while I'm really not that broken up over not being able to climb Mt. Fuji (even a little bit), I will be devastated if I can't visit the Ghibli museum because it's closed during a certain day, or I miss out of Hello Kitty Land or something.  Or I go to see an actual Japanese fish market but they've closed up by 10am and I've missed the whole thing!

When I realized all this I started to panic.  Our plains will have to be so detailed!  So exact!  We'll see this on this day at this time and blah, blah, blah.... It's way stressful.  And of course my boyfriend pointed out to me that I should probably look up what type of restraints I wanted to go to and where they were so I could find them easier.

....Really?  I have to plan everything down to where we go to eat?

The whole thought kind of bummed me out because I don't want this trip to be that way.  Hurry to this site!  Then to this museum!  Then to this place for lunch!  Then shopping here!  What fun is that?  I want to get lost in Japan, to be able to find things on accident.  But I also, on the other hand, don't want to just wander around aimlessly not knowing what to do and end up missing some stuff.

I realized after all this panic that I just need to find a good balance.  Pick out the things I really want to do and find times when they open, and just spend the rest of the time trying to find good places to eat or meeting new people by asking where to go.

Thinking about that got me more excited for the trip all together.

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