Hall Stories: My Mt Fuji Night Climb Chapter

By Nick Hall

Mt Fuji, Japan’s highest and most sacred mountain. Along with cherry blossoms, the bullet train and Hello Kitty, it’s one of the country’s most recognisable icons.

Yet while a great many tourists see Mt Fuji from a train window as they speed between Tokyo and Kyoto, it’s only when you’ve climbed it and seen the spectacular sunrise from its summit that you can truly appreciate the scale and significance of the mountain.

In this standalone version of a chapter from his forthcoming book, 'Hall Stories: My Offbeat World Travel Experiences', join Nick Hall as he attempts to conquer Mt Fuji. Woefully ill equipped to make such an arduous ascent, with his physical fitness put to shame by the sprightly Japanese senior citizens who keep overtaking him, the challenge is on to make it to the top before daybreak.

This being Japan, though, it turns out to be no ordinary night climb, and Nick encounters various oddities you wouldn’t expect to find on a mountain.

Seen through the eyes of a seasoned traveller, and full of little known facts about Mt Fuji and Japan, 'Hall Stories: My Mt Fuji Night Climb Chapter' is an offbeat look at one of the quintessential Japan tourist experiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hall
• Release date: Apr 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310986697

Nick Hall

I’m originally from a small village 30 minutes’ drive from Newcastle in the north east of England. My parents thought that drive was an epic journey, so we never usually travelled much farther afield. Consequently I discovered the world through my passion for film instead. When I took a gap year in Australia I was introduced to the joys of independent travel as a backpacker. Travel allowed me to see amazing new places and meet interesting people for real, and I well and truly caught the travel bug. Following my gap year I took a job teaching English in Japan, where I started writing about my travels and had a number of magazine articles published. I then lived in London, before moving back to Australia to make Sydney my home. In the interceding years I’ve gone out of my way, quite literally, to see as much of the world as I can. On my travels I’ve sought out the most unusual travel destinations, festivals and activities, and in doing so have become a collector of offbeat experiences that make great stories; in my forthcoming book ‘Hall Stories: My Offbeat World Travel Experiences’ I’m going to be sharing some of the best ones with you.

Book preview