Mount Fuji climbing season begins with new fee, crowd control steps – Yamanashi Prefecture

Park rangers on Mount Fuji officially started this year’s climbing season about 90 minutes before sunrise, levying new trail fees and limiting hiker numbers to curb overcrowding. At 3 a.m., officials opened a newly installed gate at a station placed just over halfway up the 3,776-metre peak that is a symbol of Japan and a magnet for tourists, now swarming into the country at a record pace.

Climbers must pay 2,000 yen and their numbers will be limited to 4,000 a day after complaints of litter, pollution, and dangerously crowded trails flowed in last year. The yen’s slide to a 38-year low has made Japan an irresistible bargain for overseas visitors. They are injecting record sums into national coffers but are also putting strains on facilities for travel and hospitality, not to mention the patience of locals.

The climbing season this year on Mount Fuji, which straddles the prefectures of Yamanashi and Shizuoka about 136 km from Tokyo, runs until September 10, after which the weather gets too cold and snowy. About 300,000 people are estimated to make the climb each year, official figures show. Hikers typically start in the wee hours to make it to the top in time for sunrise.

For their money, climbers receive a wristband giving access to the trail between 3 a.m. and 4 p.m, excluding those with reservations for mountain huts closer to the peak, to whom the daily limit on visitors will not apply, authorities say. The new trail curbs were necessary to prevent accidents and incidents of altitude sickness, particularly among foreign “bullet climbers”, or those racing to the top, Yamanashi governor Kotaro Nagasaki said last month.

Japan should focus on attracting “higher spending visitors” over sheer numbers of people, he told a press conference. Geoffrey Kula, one overseas climber waiting to scale Mount Fuji on opening day, took the restrictions in stride. “This is not Disneyland,” said Kula, a visitor from Boston. “Having some sort of access control system to limit the amount of potential chaos is good.”

Nearly half of Japanese in survey plan to spend summer vacation at home – Nationwide

It’s summer, and very soon all students will have about a month of freedom away from their school walls to go out into the world and explore. But have you seen prices of just about everything these days?

And according to a survey by insurance company Nippon Life, we’re not alone. The company asked people how they plan to spend their summer vacation and a whopping 48.4 percent responded that they would stay home or go to places in their general area. Domestic travel requiring overnight stays was a distant second with 16.3 percent, and going on nearby day trips was third with 10.2 percent. The top five was rounded out with returning to one’s hometown (9.6 percent) and going abroad (3.2 percent) in fourth and fifth respectively.

The rather low percentage of people returning to their hometowns is perhaps most surprising, as the August Obon holidays are traditionally a time for families to gather. Nippon Life also found that the average budget was 58,000 yen, and at current fares for trains, buses, and planes, a family of four might have trouble pulling it off, depending on the distance.

According to online comments about the survey, while money is a big factor, it’s hardly the only factor keeping people in Japan at home this summer. Some say that it is just too hot to go outside, while others say that the cost is too expensive if they were to travel anywhere, especially overseas. So, it would appear that everything sucks outside if you live in Japan, and most people are opting to stay home and save their money for something more worthwhile, like luxury sparklers and/or booze.