Scaling Mt. Fuji for Christmas

Scaling Mt. Fuji for Christmas:  Preparation, preparation, preparation

In order to scale Mt. Fuji you must have the following:

Tickets for the night bus - check

Toiletries - check

Warm clothing and heat packs - check

Food and drinks - ohagi and diet pepsi - check

Medicine - check

Electronics - check

Backpack - check

All my supplies are accounted for.  I arrive at the bus station many hours early so I can find my departure gate.  I finally get through to the ticket saleman what I need.  He walks me out to the gate and says "here."  Then he shows me the bus station waiting room.  I crochet unfinished Christmas bells and listen to an audiobook.  I was only interrupted twice, once by a woman that admired my bells and a secon time by a 20 something boy panhandling.  He said, "I'm hungry give me money."  I said, "No, I can't."  I don't know why I said can't instead of won't, but after a few minutes he left.  I found the right bus and got on.  I was the only one to get on at this location.  The windows are all covered with blackout curtains, I am five rows back from the bus driver, and have two seats to myself.  We make a few more stops and pick up more passengers.  Mostly 20 somethings and a few people my age or older.  We travel so several hours and then park.  I hear the bus driver leave the bus while the bus is still running.  I doze on and off for several hours waking up and wondering if I was going to die from carbon-monoxide posioning.  Then I figure they do this everyday, surely there isn't a problem.  I have a strange dream about rocks of fantastic colors.  They certainly wouldn't look that way in real life.  

Eventually the bus driver comes back and we continue our journey.  I don't mind the bus ride when we are travelling straight, but I can't stand the sensation of turns that I don't know are coming.  We have several stops near our destination, but I get off and the bus driver says it isn't my stop and there is one more to go.  I suddenly see Mt. Fuji from the bus.  It is huge and is just "there."  On one side there is a secondary cone about half way up that looks like a pimple.  Only two of us are left on the bus and we arrive at Fugiyama station.  

I have a disclaimer - I never intended to actually scale Mt. Fuji (1) because it is a very tall mountain and (2) it is only open for climbing in the summer.  That being said I did want to take a bus to 5th station - part way up the mountain.  There are stores and restaurants and in an apres ski kind of way I thought it would be peaceful.  When I go to buy my ticket to get to 5th station the attendent said there is no bus today.  He doesn't say whether it is because of the weather or because of Christmas, but that blew my plan for the day.  I ask what else there is to do and he gets irritated with me and says go to the Information center.  I never did find the information center.  None of the station shops were open yet so I walked around town a bit and took a picture.  

I went back to the station and went up to the observation deck and took some more pictures.

It is huge.  

I did love sitting on the observation deck.  It did give me the apres skiing kind of feeling.

I did some shopping and bought some souveniers - pictures, chopsticks/rests, and a magnet.  I wasn't feeling great because of the bus ride and what I found out later was a thyroid imbalance, so I decided to take the train home.