00:01 John Daub: There it is, the sunrise on Mount Fuji. It's been a couple of minutes, but you get the point. It's somewhat overrated and something that every single visitor who comes to Mount Fuji feels that it's the thing to do, but actually, I think there's a better way to do it. And I'm saying this as someone who's climbed it three times. You can see the Fujinomiya Trail (Fuji-Nomiya Trail) is open. I've been here, this is my fourth day, which is crazy. No one stays that long unless you're working here. But all these people came up last night. They came up through the middle of the night to climb to see the sunrise. I get it. I guess it's kind of neat to do something like that.

00:46 John Daub: But I think there's a better way. I'm going to show it to you in a second. I'm starting to recognize this. I've done a few live streams from here. That's the summit right there. This area right on the top, you can see there's a marker. I don't know why it's been blurry the last couple of days, but if I zoom in here a little bit, yeah, you can see there's a right on the very top, there's a marker where people are lined up to take a picture. It's kind of crowded. It's not the greatest. You can see it's going to take a while before the sun gets into the crater. And the best place to be is actually from the not the Fujinomiya Trail, but you want to go up to that line over there near the Yoshida Trail. The Yoshida Trail is much better for the sunrise.

01:34 John Daub: With that said, should you avoid Mount Fuji for the sunrise? My feeling, yes. Yes. You can see the sunrise anywhere. It's nothing really that special to see on the top of Mount Fuji. I do think the best thing that you could do is to do it all in one day, which is possible. They call it bullet climbing, but I don't really think it's bullet climbing. The dangerous thing is when you do it through the night. Because when you do it through the day, it's still fairly warm outside. So, by the time you start getting hit with the headaches, you're pretty much at the summit. You can walk around the summit in an hour, and then you start to head down. There's really not a lot to do up here. As you can see, I've been here for four days. I've mostly just been sleeping in the hut when I'm not filming the post office and some of the other places.

02:26 John Daub: Yeah, and I've been sleeping inside of there. That's the Chōjō Fuji-kan (Summit Fuji Lodge). Dozo, dozo. It's free country. It's cold out here. It is really cold out here. Let me just show you what I'm talking about. So, on the Yoshida side, the entry to the fifth station, which is the entry point into the course, it opens up at 9am and it closes at 2pm. The reason why is they don't want anyone to bullet climb. They want to keep the people who are going to the course through the night. It was 4pm last year. It's 2pm this year. So that means hikers can't enter the trail after that time unless you have a mountain hut reservation. Because they had people sleeping outside in the cold and it was kind of dangerous. They had some issues in the past. It's just overcrowding. 300,000 people climb Mount Fuji. It's a lot of people. You must also pay a 4,000 yen fee. It's the same 2pm to 3am entry ban. You cannot enter between 2pm and 3am unless you have a booking.

04:04 John Daub: When the Fujinomiya Trail opened, I don't think they had a lot of bookings. There's some growing pains. It's crazy that I could pay by credit card up here. I said, can I pay by credit card? She said, okay. I touched. I paid. Got a receipt. That's pretty crazy. Let me pull this one up here. So this is a sample itinerary of what I did. If you depart at 9am, which is probably a good idea. Get an early start. Maybe even earlier. The gates open at 9am, I believe. It might open earlier. I'm not sure. As long as you get an early start, and you reach the summit in the afternoon, and then start going down before the sunset. The sun sets 7:30, 8pm in the summer. That's a very good day. You don't need to stay in a mountain hut. You can eat lunch there. But there's no reason for you to have to endure too much of the mountain hut toilets, which are kind of not the wonderful things. There's no plumbing. There's no water coming up here. No faucets.

05:03 John Daub: So basically, like last night it rained, which is actually a very good thing. Because they collect that rainwater, and then they use that to take showers at some of the lodges for their staff. I thought the gates would be earlier than 9. I think the Fujinomiya Trail opened at 9. Maybe that's what it's all about. You can see some of the people hiking up. Their colorful jackets. My fingers are a little bit cold. I do have gloves, but it's good to have a beanie. I thought I lost it. I found my beanie. It was inside my hood. I went to bed, and I'm like, where's my blue hat? Oh, it's inside my sweatshirt hood. But the thing is, everyone's doing it in the morning, like, trying to see the sunrise. It's not that great. And if you avoid the crowds, your experience is like a hundred times better. And that's why I'm telling you, avoid this through the night to try to get the sunrise type of thing. It's just not that wonderful. A lot of people miss it. Alright? A lot of people miss the sunrise. They see it on the course. And then there's like a moment of about thirty seconds. Your life doesn't change. And then the sun's up. And you've been walking through the night, and you're cold. How is that fun?

06:29 John Daub: This is live. Of course it is. It should say it on YouTube. Why is it so bright already? Because the sun comes up at 4:30. I think you could probably see it around, start seeing the colors around 4:20 on the other side, on the Yoshida Trail. And the sun will come up over the crater. You probably get it early up here, which is about a hundred meters higher than where I am now. That's the summit. So that probably is the best spot. And then the second best spot would be on the other side of the crater, right over there, which is where the Yoshida Trail is. The Fujinomiya Trail does not have a good sunrise spot, because it's not facing the sun. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west.

07:31 John Daub: The post office opens at 6, so I'm going to go say hi to my friends there. I filmed the last day. There's going to be a lot more. There weren't that many people at the post office yesterday. But I sent all the postcards, so there are a lot of them. And they kindly put on two stamps for you guys. One of the official sanchō (summit) post office stamp. And then they put a special Mount Fuji sanchō red stamp on there. So you have two stamps on your postcard sent from Mount Fuji. I think that's kind of cool. They're happy to do it too. Although I felt a little bad to bring a stack of postcards this big. It was like two kilograms of postcards. But they took them anyways, and they did a good job with it. It goes down by bulldozer tomorrow. So it'll take a little bit longer to get to you. Probably by the end of the month, I'm sure.

08:27 John Daub: The breakfast here was interesting. It was green tea with saba (mackerel). It was in a bag that was boiled, I think. And then you just open the bag and pour it out yourself. It has miso paste, miso saba. You see the bag on the right side. So I think that was okay. Here's what the morning looked like in front of the Chōjō Fuji-kan, where I stayed. See a lot of the hikers trying to go up to that mountain. They don't know where to go. Most people are shouting in non-Japanese languages. Usually many locals are quite quiet here. Just kind of saying. The sun hadn't hit me yet, but you can see it hits the summit there. And there's already a line to take a picture in front of the summit marker. That was about 20 minutes ago or so.

09:26 John Daub: I don't want to tell you not to do it, but I've done this now three times. I've been living on Mount Fuji for four days. I've seen the sunrise four times. It's not life-changing. You know what? It's better if you start at like 7 a.m. Get here by lunchtime. Hike around when it's nice and warm up here. And then have a coffee and then go down. Take your time. Go down, enjoy the view. And sleep in your own frickin' bed. Because it's so nice to sleep in a nice bed. You don't understand. My bed was like body size. And yesterday I was shoulder to shoulder because people came for the first time. I had the room by myself. The dude's like right next to me. Nothing wrong with the dude. Actually he's a pretty good sleeper. He slept like Dracula. He didn't move or shuffle around. So that was a good thing. But you could get some dudes here that are not dudes. That are coughing and rustling around. They're right next to you. And they keep talking. I don't know what it is with foreigners. But they don't like to turn their phones on silent mode in the middle of the night. Everyone's phone ringers are going off. Something like this. Woody Woodpecker. It's crazy. So you definitely need those ear plugs. And I'm glad I had them. Because I could get maybe 3 hours of decent sleep. But I kept having these nightmares. I can't even remember. But they weren't good. Something about like pushing people away maybe. I'm ready to go home. I am.

11:14 John Daub: Hey Eugene Travels is here. In any case be safe there. Hope to see you in my one month trip in November. I'll be here. So there you go. I don't want to take up too much of your time this morning. I do really think that the best plan would be to leave maybe 6 or 7 o'clock. I'd say 7. But if you're coming by Shinkansen from Tokyo you could do that. Get here by 9. There are buses that leave from Shin Fuji or Fuji Station that come up to the Fujinomiya place. It might be good to stay in Fujinomiya at night. And then take a taxi up here. I think it's like 5,000 yen. Like 35 dollars. I'm not sure. It's a good 30 minute ride. And then start your climb. When you're going back there are buses that will take you to the Fuji Station or Shin Fuji Station. For the Shinkansen. But that's all I got for you. Avoid the sunrise. It's not worth it. I showed you the picture of it. So you don't have to.

12:20 John Daub: It's really cold. I've got to get my gloves on. I've got another 2 hours here. I'm getting the heck out of here. I'm going down. I've got to sleep in my own bed tonight. I'm going back to America. I've got my flights tomorrow. This is crazy. What the heck am I doing? I feel great. I can run around. I've got a lot of energy. When I get back down I'm going to have so many red blood cells. I could probably run a marathon in like 1 hour. It's crazy. Because when you start feeling so good after you've been up here for a long time. Anyone who's ever climbed. When I got back home after visiting Bolivia and Chile and Tibet and all these other places. I felt great. You feel like this new person from all the extra red blood cells from acclimatizing.

13:04 John Daub: I'm going to get a good night's sleep. Good breakfast. Then get on that plane and go back to America. Which just takes 24 hours. 14 hours in the air. I've got to wait for about 3 hours. I'm taking the train from Penn Station up to New England. We should do a Penn Station meet up. I'm just saying. We'll talk about it tomorrow maybe. I'll do a live stream tomorrow. Thank you Sakura for the Patreon pledge there. I appreciate it. I just saw a note. I'm going to get a good night's sleep. Maybe we should do a quick meet up at Penn Station. They have a cake shop that was really good. Go hang out for 30 minutes to an hour. Then I've got to take the train up to New England.

13:47 John Daub: Alright guys. Take care. Stay warm. I say that because you probably... I should say stay cool. But I'm freaking freezing here. I've got to do some filming. That's my camera cube. I have two lenses. Battery charger. A little light. This little camera, which has been awful. Because the battery keeps dying before I could use it. Even though I charged it. I don't know what's going on. And then this camera which has been awesome. This X5. And it attaches with this magnetic holder right onto my backpack like this. It's really good. A couple other people had it I saw. Should be a good video. Alright. See you from the summit. From the summit of Mt. Fuji. Live. This is kind of cool. I'm still shocked that we had a HD 1080p signal to do a live stream. So I'll see you tomorrow. Unless I see something on the course. Maybe I'll go live again. I don't know. I've done stranger things. It's going to be fun hiking back down. I don't think they're doing a group photo. I thought they were. Alright. See you.