In the summer of 2002, I spent a few weeks hitchhiking town to town from Hokkaido (the northernmost island in Japan) to Shizuoka (near Tokyo), with the vague goal of climbing Mt. Fuji, the tallest and most revered mountain in Japan.

It was a beautiful summer day when I finished the final leg of my hitchhike to Mt. Fuji. The driver who picked me up and drove me there seemed confused as to my destination: the bottom of Fuji-san. He dropped me off on a small side road – “Zisu.. izu… bottom… Fuji-san” — just as the last rays of sunlight were fading.

I hadn’t really read much about climbing Fuji, except that most people climbed it at night — to view the sun rising from the peak in the morning. I soon came across an old rusted sign that read: (in Japanese) “Mt. Fuji 1st station” and a small overgrown hiking path. Okay, I thought. I’m on the right track. By this point, the sky was almost pitch-dark so I fished out my trusty flashlight — which I had bought the day before at the 100Yen store (the Japanese cultural equivalent of our Dollar Store). After passing the sign for the 2nd station and not running into a single person, I began to worry I had started up an old, now-unused climbing path. The more than occasional spider-web-to-the-face only added to my suspicions. I nonetheless decided that the path would eventually have to meet with another path, at the very least at the summit.

When I reached the 3rd station I tried in vain to remember how many “stations” Fuji had. Five? Ten? Fifteen? I couldn’t remember. By the 4th station — about three and a half hours after starting — I had stepped on one giant frog, seen a few more, and been scared shitless by what I believe to be a bear (although I have since noticed that most noises you hear while walking in the woods at night by yourself are usually thought to be made by a bear).

As I neared the fifth station, I saw a light glimmering through the trees. This is it, I thought, I’m at the top. I’ve conquered Fuji! But as I passed through the last stand of trees before the opening, I watched in disbelief as a group of about 100 Japanese climbed off their tour bus. Some were busily packing rucksacks, some sitting down and eating a quaint little picnic… As I walked past one group of particularly cheerful picnickers and realized that I had spent five hours trudging up an abandoned hiking path to get to everyone else’s starting point, I swore aloud in English – one of those particularly harsh phrases that you save for when something bad happens in a country where no one will understand. “You look tired. Did you just come down from the top?” responded an attractive foreign girl I hadn’t noticed in perfect English. I apologized and she introduced herself as Veronica, was an English teacher from Australia, and pointed to her boyfriend, Peter from Sweden, a few feet away, who was studying Japanese for a year. And so it was that I fell in with two new climbing mates. Hell, after the long, lonely climb I had just endured, I would have settled for one of those stuffed animals that talk to you when you pull the string.

As my new hiking partners began their climb, I trudged past the halfway mark. We talked a while about being a foreigner (gaijin) in Japan; about our cultural follies and pet peeves. Veronica, a beautiful, Australian of Polynesian descent, had been teaching English in Tokyo for about two months and actually knew less Japanese than yours truly (myself being very proficient in ordering both beer and sake).

Meandering slowly up past the 6th and 7th stations, the weather made a hairpin turn for the worse. The sky clouded over and started shooting down hailstones as big as driveway gravel. The temperature quickly dropped and the wind picked up, sweeping pebbles from the volcanic Mt. Fuji down onto us along with the gigantic hailstones.

A couple hours since we had left the fifth station and here we were: I made a comment that I pictured Hell a lot warmer and less steep than this. “Maybe this is Shinto Hell…” said Peter, as he passed his little oxygen canister that he insisted was making the hike easier. Upon reaching the 8th station we were met by a large crowd of climbers sitting outside of the small cabin on a wooden bench. One American hiker informed us: “they’ve closed off the rest of the mountain. Too dangerous they say. Worst storm in a couple years — I guess it’s too windy to even stand at the top!” The cabin-keeper came out and said that the peak would likely not be reachable this morning and we should probably start heading down the mountain. While most headed back down, a few small groups of climbers stuck around hoping the weather would improve, mostly stubborn Americans and of course my little group (after all that I’d been through, I wanted the bragging rights). So we sat on the wooden benches, myself, Peter and Veronica huddled with my 500Yen sleeping bag wrapped around us, protecting us from the hail and sand falling down and told travel stories.

Two long hours passed, and finally the Japanese man working the station came out from his cabin with his two-way radio in hand. “The final two stations are open.” He announced, then added “But only to experienced climbers!” After Peter convinced the man that we were practically regular alpine trekkers and this was but a mere warm-up, he let us pass, along with a few other groups. Slogging along for another few hours through hail, strong winds, and flying sandstone, we finally reached the peak – but I’ll be dammed if we could see anything for all the fog there was. We sat down in the cabin relieved to be out of the horrid weather. I noticed a cabin-worker stirring a huge cast-iron pot of miso soup and realized my hunger. Though I did pay nearly ten dollars Canadian for a tiny bowl of miso soup on the top of Mt. Fuji – it was the best damned miso soup I ever tasted.

I feel that life is a lot like Fuji San. You have to face everything with an attitude that you will get to your goal, the top of the mountain, no matter what, even when there are setbacks and challenges. If you give up, you never get to taste that best miso soup at the end of the journey.