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Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise ... or so they say. We had at least managed the early-to-rise part, and the day's activities seemed sure to make us a little more healthy too, as we were heading off to try and climb Mount Fuji. The earlier we got there, we reasoned, the further up the mountain we would be able to climb before time ran out.

However, the start of the day didn't run quite to plan. The first bus to Kawaguchi, the town at the foot of the mountain, didn't arrive until 10am, and with the last bus leaving from the mountain's base camp at around 5pm, our plans to make it to the top had taken a blow before we even got there.

The bus that took us to Kawaguchi was utterly bizarre, since it seemed to be on day-release from a children's theme park (picture here). And the early-morning excitement obviously was too much for poor George, who had to take forty winks on the journey (picture). However, there were some nice views of the mountain from the bus, which were enough to keep the rest of us awake until we reached Kawaguchi.

From there, it was another bus ride up to camp 5, the highest point to which road vehicles could travel (about 2300m, I think). A range of crap overpriced goodies were available here, but we didn't stay long before starting the big climb.

At first, it all seemed too easy, as for the first few hundred yards we weren't actually climbing at all - the path just led round the side of the mountain. However, this was just lulling us into a false sense of security, and soon the path got a bit rockier and starting going more steeply uphill. After about two minutes of this, I was already beginning to question the wisdom of climbing the entire mountain, and to have grave doubts about my fitness levels. I get the impression that everyone else was thinking roughly the same thing (well, maybe not DV). However, despite the occasional outburst of "I'm knackered already", there was still an utterly inexplicable optimism that we might make it to the top.

I was not helped in my climbing attempts by my utterly inappropriate choice of footwear (i.e. trainers with hardly any grip), but nevertheless I was still struggling along gamely after an hour or two. Here I am a little way up the mountain (better picture) (picture of Sultoon).

At this point I was beginning to realise that I had brought a pitiful amount of water, and that I was going to struggle without more. Since nobody else was keen to give up their larger water rations, for understandable reasons, I was in trouble. It wasn't hot, but the sun was nevertheless beating down, and we were all going to end up a bit sunburnt; worse than that, though, was the thinness of the air, which was a new experience to me. It took much longer to recover after climbing for a while than I might have expected, and the whole thing was getting pretty damn tiring. Looking up the mountain at the distance we had still to cover, I realised that without more water it wasn't going to happen.

This view was reinforced by the people we met coming back down the mountain. They had somehow managed to get there much earlier than us (several were England fans, stopping off before heading down to Osaka like us for the Nigeria game). They said that, basically, it was too cold, we would need more equipment, and we weren't going to make it.

Disheartened by the fact that I now had no water left at all, I eventually had to embark back down, but DV couldn't be stopped, and was by now a mere dot in the distance further up the path, still dressed in nothing but his shorts and t-shirt. A broken Fox, Sultoon and George followed gamely. Sultoon gave up shortly after me, having had the satisfaction of reaching the 3000m mark (which turned out to be only a short distance from where I had been forced to give up, irritatingly). However, his retirement was brought on by a comical piece of foolishness, as he tripped over a stray rock and injured himself within a couple of feet of the big milestone. The injury wasn't actually too bad, but the pain in his leg and elbow were the last straw and he followed me back down. By now, the line was strung out, and Fox and George were still battling on gamely to the 3250m point. Utterly broken, they gave up and set off back down, wondering just how far DV would go. We all had visions of DV turning up at the top of the mountain in just shorts and t-shirt and wondering why all the other climbers had bothered with their equipment. As it turned out, his Herculean efforts got him as far as 3400m, before he too finally accepted defeat and turned back - didn't want to miss the bus, after all.

We all scooted back down the mountain (far easier than the climb, unsurprisingly) and made it back to base camp, where I was delighted to be able to buy something to drink, having not had anything for absolutely ages. Sultoon managed to take an accidental detour on the way down into some kind of quarry - God knows what strange route he took - and the pair of us went on ahead back down to Kawaguchi, since we'd agreed to meet up there rather than at base camp.

By this time I had a little more energy, having refreshed myself, so after the pair of us had got some chicken curry down us, Sultoon sat at the bus station while I went for a wander. I soon managed to find Kawaguchi-ko (that's Lake Kawaguchi to you), which was another nice piece of scenery. The mountain looked pretty impressive from down here (below - click here for bigger version).

Having taken a few pictures of the mountain, I wandered back to find the others, and we tried to get some idea of how close to the top of the mountain we'd got, eventually coming to the conclusion that we'd done quite well under the circumstances. Yuhei would tell us later on that in fact, he had made it to the top, but only by spending the night in a shelter a few hundred metres from the summit - it wasn't a one-day job.

So to the journey back. Fox refused to look at the mountain as we left, furious at what the mountain had done to us. However, it wasn't actually that late, since it was only public transport that had made us depart at this point, so we still had time to get back and see most of Portugal v Poland. This turned out to be the only Portugal game we actually saw, and they looked pretty good. I guess that's cheese on Figo.

Anyway, there wasn't much time to mess about, since we were heading down south the next day, to our next ryokan in Kyoto, to prepare for the big England game ... Once we'd done the packing, we were all ready for Day 16 >>