July 1st is 山開き, yama biraki — the day Mount Fuji opens its trails to the public each year. The climbing season runs through the end of August, and every summer, hundreds of thousands of people make the ascent: Japanese families, international visitors, seasoned hikers, and complete beginners who have decided that this is the year.

I was one of those people in the summer of 2017. Climbing Fuji had been on my list for a long time. I finally convinced my family to join me, and we booked mountain huts near the summit for an overnight stay — the classic approach, which lets you rest before the final push to the top and watch the sunrise from the crater rim.

What I did not account for was the typhoon.

The climb

The weather during climbing season on Fuji is supposed to be reasonable — that is more or less the point of the season. But weather on a 3,776-meter mountain does what it wants regardless of the calendar. The days we were on the mountain, a typhoon was making its way through the region. Rain-soaked clothes, wind, cold that I was not prepared for despite having prepared. The trail up was not what I had imagined.

I will be honest: there were stretches of that climb where I was half-crying and cursing quietly to myself. Not the serene mountain experience I had envisioned.

And yet we pressed on. The family pressed on. There is something about a shared miserable experience that bonds people in a way that comfortable ones do not. By the time we reached the huts, exhausted and wet, there was a feeling of having done something real together — even if none of us would have chosen the conditions.

The sunrise

The next morning cleared enough to see it. 御来光, goraiko — the honorific sunrise, the reason most people time the climb the way they do. The light coming over the horizon from above the clouds, the crater in front of you, the sense of the country spread out below. It is one of those things that earns its reputation.

富士山 is sacred in Japan — a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the subject of thousands of years of art and poetry, the most recognizable symbol of the country to people everywhere in the world. Standing on its summit, in the early morning light, that weight is palpable. It is not just a tall mountain. It is the mountain that Japan has been looking at and painting and writing about and climbing for as long as Japan has been Japan.

What the Japanese say about it

There is a saying: 富士山に登らぬ馬鹿、二度登る馬鹿 — a fool never climbs Fuji, but a fool climbs it twice. The implication being that you should do it once for the experience, and then leave it at that.

Having done it once, in a typhoon, with my family, half-crying on the way up and watching the sunrise at the top — I think once was exactly right.