Fujisan - day 1

to be perfectly honest, I still get that childhood excitement when I ride the shinkansen. everything about it says air travel opposed to just getting on an ordinary train. the sight of a wingless airplane approaching the platform is like going back in time to when trains were really respected for their engineering and speed with the barriers protecting you from the edge of the platform suggesting you are about to experience something altogether more thrilling and exotic. inside - the roof lights, the windows, the food trays - all of the interior is like a plane. when you bank on one of the few, but long corners you see the ground out of one window and sky out of the other. even the conductors are referred to as crew - it's fairly subtle language which works well.

catching a very early shinkansen also brought that nervous excitement of impending travel and slightly numb feeling from lack of sleep combined with the cold airconditioning that tries to prevent you from catching up on any.

four of us were heading up to mishima on the hikari (makes a few more stops than the nozomi) and we made it there in within 2 and half hours from osaka. unpacking the bike bags in mishima, the sun was out and the weekend was looking good. as the map had suggested, the climb up towards fuji was a gradual one with a final, steeper pass to get over in order to roll down past yamanaka and into the town of fujiyoshida itself. after a stop for curry/pasta and coffee, we all made it up the pass pretty quickly inculding Nakajima's son who is just 11. hat's were off to the wee man who 6 hours earlier was not looking quite so bright.

I should mention that despite the cliched image, fujisan is quite a presence in the flesh. it's been many years since I saw her up close but the scale it really quite something, exaggerated by standing alone. the shape is so beautiful and subtle and scaling it looks easily achievable but still you must have a lot of respect for it and be prepared. in those terms i guess it goes someway describe the japanese people themselves.

passing yamanaka there is a feeling of holiday about the place - foreigners, things to rent, over priced food and great views - it reminds me of loch lomond with the forests, lake and now a few clouds - I even see a pretty girl with a scotland T-shirt on. I felt like shouting 'awwright hen - gonna geezaswatch ay yer gash' but as I've become so refined since moving here, I decided against it.

we signed in just below the first station of fujisan or ichigome and collected chips to record our time, numbers and lots of advertising bumf which was quite unnecessary but probably keeps costs down. we checked in at our hotels after a japanese dinner and were presumably all as dead beat as I was. the race loomed in my head as I took a bath in the shortest, most narrow bath I've ever been in. the borrowers or barbie would have been in heaven but if I had been any more tired I might not have been able to prize myself out. even nakajimasan and yuasasan were laughing at the thought.