October 25 , 2003 - page 3

We had to catch a train to get to Mt. Fuji, and this simple task proved to be quite an adventure. We were running behind, as usual, and we had to sprint from a shopping mall to Tokyo station. Yuji hurriedly purchased all three tickets and he and Momoko took off for the train. One small problem, they didn’t give me a ticket. They whizzed through the turnstile before I had realized what had happened. Realizing I didn’t have a ticket to hand the attendant I tried to pull some more of my Bond moves, as I tried to leap over the turnstile. The angry attendant quickly put the stop on that plan, and I soon found myself trying to explain in Japanese that my friends had my ticket, but just forgot to hand it to me because we were in such a hurry. He wasn’t buying my story, so I screamed at the top of my lungs for Yuji and Momoko. Luckily amidst all the commotion he heard me and realized what had happened. He rushed back to the turnstile, flung the attendant my ticket, and the next thing I knew I was leaping into a train. We had approximately 2.5 seconds to spare. Whew.

For a little background info, Mt. Fuji is one of the most prominent features of Japan, and every year thousands of people per day climb the volcanic mountain during the two-month long climbing season. I decided that a trip to Japan,

without climbing Fuji was unacceptable, so I conned Yuji and Momoko into climbing the mountain with me.

Our escapades in Tokyo had completely exhausted us, and as soon as we checked into our hotel, we went to sleep. Tomorrow would be the big day; I was anxious to climb Japan’s most famous mountain.