See Mount Fuji was a compelling need. It wasn’t on my life’s to-do list, until it was and became something absolutely essential. The legendary aura of this mountain (well, of this volcano), the clichés I was constantly seeing, its beauty. Everything contributed to make this place a dream I would not stop chasing until it came true.

I first caught sight of it from the Government Building, in Tokyo. A vague shadow in the background, a small, perfectly recognizable silhouette. Then, as I was wandering around remote corners of Engaku-ji temple in Kamakura, it popped up by surprise over the verdurous hills. Its snow-capped peak, like a greedy surprise.

It shirked from my sight when I could have admired it from the shores of Ashi lake in Hakone. But it was only to offer itself better, in all its majestic quietness, through the windows of the bus that took me down to Gotemba. Then through those of the bus taking me up to Kawaguhiko. At every bend it came through the window, bigger, brighter, closer than ever. 

I couldn’t explain the vivid, almost childlike emotion I felt walking through Kawaguchiko streets, on Fujiyoshida sidewalks, having only to turn my head to catch a glimpse of it. At its immobile, ancient, hypnotic puissance. I just couldn’t take my eyes off it. 

I got up at 5am to observe the sunrise caress its velvety slopes, I walked along the shores of Kawaguchiko lake, delighted by the transfiguration of the landscape as the minutes passed by, as the light grew brighter. Each new decor sublimating it a little more. Unless it was it that sublimated the most banal scene of life?

I left imbued with a strange melancholy, yet so, so happy. The bittersweet emotion of a dream fulfilled, perhaps.

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