Illegal Off-Season Climb of Mount Fuji

It starts in a bar.

I am in Tokyo with my brother Dylan, packed shoulder to shoulder in Golden Gai, the kind of place where plans are made accidentally and then taken too far. We are not talking about Mount Fuji seriously at first. It is half a joke. The kind of thing you say late at night when the city feels endless and anything seems possible.

We meet Aiden and his brother Dylan that night. Same names. Same energy. Same age. The coincidence is funny enough to keep the conversation going. Somewhere between drinks, Mount Fuji comes up again. This time it sticks.

We had already talked about climbing it earlier in the trip. The problem was simple. We could not rent a car. No international license. End of story. Until it is not.

Aiden and his brother look at us and say they both have international driver’s licenses.

That is the moment everything shifts.

The next day, they rent a car for two days. Not just for Fuji, but because if we are doing this, we are doing it right. We spend the entire day driving around greater Tokyo. Over the massive bridge stretching across the bay. Through the long underwater tunnel where the city disappears. Out to a giant statue standing on the far side of the water. We are everywhere and nowhere, killing time, buzzing with anticipation.

By early evening, we know what is coming. We eat. We shower. We go to bed at six in the evening like kids before a field trip. I wake up at eleven p.m. to the sound of my phone. Midnight pickup.

We drive through the night.

The city fades. Streetlights thin out. By the time we reach the Subaru Fifth Station on Mount Fuji, it is around three in the morning. The air is cold and still. Headlamps flicker on. The mountain looms above us, invisible but massive. We start hiking in the dark.

We are wildly underprepared.

No crampons. Minimal layers. Way less food than we should have. The climb is slow. Painfully slow. And because of that, someone catches up to us.

Her name is Carmen.

She is a solo traveler from Sweden, living out of her van in Japan, climbing mountains casually while we are struggling for every step. She has been moving faster than us and eventually just falls into pace. No announcement. No awkward introduction. She becomes part of the group because that is what happens on mountains.

Now it is five of us. Two brothers named Dylan. Aiden. Me. And Carmen.

The sun rises somewhere below us. The light creeps across the clouds. The terrain changes constantly. Loose rock. Volcanic ash. Endless switchbacks that never seem to get closer to the top. We stop. We eat. We laugh about how bad of an idea this was. We keep going anyway.

Hours pass.

By the time we reach the summit, it is Halloween.

Standing on top of Japan’s highest point feels unreal. The air is thin. The wind is sharp. Aiden climbs the weather tower at the top, laughing like a maniac, briefly becoming the highest person in the entire country. We take photos. We sit. We breathe. Carmen smiles like this is just another Tuesday.

There is no ceremony. No crowd. No official moment. Just exhaustion and disbelief.

The descent is brutal. Knees shaking. Legs fried. Twelve hours total on the mountain, up and down. When we finally reach the car again, none of us speak much. We are too tired to process what just happened.

We drive back to Tokyo in silence.

Later that night, we eat ramen. Hot. Salty. Perfect. Then we shower, change, and somehow go back out into the city. Tokyo is dressed for Halloween. Neon lights. Costumes. Music spilling into the streets. I am sore everywhere, but it does not matter.

Two days ago, Mount Fuji was a joke in a bar.

Now it is a memory that feels impossible to explain unless you were there.