When Saudis go abroad for training and international work experience, excellent opportunities can be created for inter-cultural exchanges. That’s exactly what happened when Sami Bukhari, the Tokyo representative of Aramco Overseas Company, invited his brother, Farid Bukhari, proprietor of Alkhobar’s Desert Designs, and Farid’s family, to spend their summer holiday with him in Japan.
“It was a wonderful place to go for a vacation,” said Farid. “I didn’t expect that it would be as enjoyable as it was, but Japan is amazing. The people are so nice, so humble and so polite. They love meeting Saudis. My sister-in-law wears the hijab and she hasn’t experienced anything unpleasant during my brother’s work assignment in Japan, so we weren’t apprehensive at all about going out. We encountered many Muslims while we were in Tokyo. They all seemed content.”
Farid advised that although everyone thinks that vacationing in Japan is very expensive, the cost of their trip was comparable to spending a holiday at any cosmopolitan destination. Language was not a big problem as some people spoke English and public transportation and areas frequented by tourists had signs and instructions in English.
“The Japanese don’t mind talking to you in English but we found that we made people really happy when we tried to speak Japanese,” Farid remarked. “Another first rate thing about Japan is that the public transportation there is excellent, safe and works on time, so getting around is not difficult.”
During their vacation, while coming back from a resort near Tokyo, Farid encountered an American tourist who had climbed Mount Fuji. His description of the hike made the trek sound too good to miss. Even though their families thought they were “crazy,” the brothers put down $170 each and went out to buy the equipment needed for the climb.
At 3,776 meters, the iconic Mt. Fuji is Japan’s highest mountain. Annually, approximately 180,000 people hike up this dormant volcano. Reaching the summit of “Fuji-san,” is a goal for most of Japan’s people, although a minority of the population ever manage the climb. The official climbing season is July and August, when the mountain is usually free of snow, and the weather is relatively mild.
On Aug. 5, when Farid and Sami climbed the mountain it was 27 degrees at Fuji-san’s base and minus 5 degrees at the summit.
“We didn’t have any idea in advance about climbing Mount Fuji, so it was a shock when we arrived at the meeting point to catch the bus to the mountain and we discovered that there were 70 buses there waiting to transport climbers. We found out that about 3,000 people climb the mountain daily during the official season,” Farid explained.
And it turned out that this is part of the Mount Fuji experience. The other piece of information essential to understanding the lure of the mountain is that the goal of the climb is to summit the mountain in time to witness “goraiko” or sunrise. There is a volcanic crater at the top, but the sunrise is the real attraction. “It was very peaceful on the climb. No mobile phones. No shouting. Everyone was focused on the goal. It’s an incline the whole way up and in some places there are loose rocks, so you need to walk at a steady pace and pay attention to the trail the entire time,” Farid said. “We started climbing at 11 a.m. and at 5:00 in the evening we reached a point that was 3,000 meters. There we stopped and rested, two to each bed for two hours. Then we ate and slept again. At 8 p.m. we started climbing again and it was really tough. It was dark, only the moon and the stars. We wore head mounted lamps. It was amazing to see line after line of lights going up the mountain. We reached the summit at 3 a.m. and thousands of people sat there with us in complete silence. At about 3:45 the sun appeared and everyone started clapping.”
After sunrise, Farid and Sami went off to have some breakfast and get the final brand, proving that they’d summitted Fuji-san, burned into their hiking sticks. Then they learned that the group would immediately begin hiking down the mountain.
“We were all exhausted but the Japanese always keep to their schedules. So after a quick view of the crater, it was off down the mountain,” said Farid with a chuckle.
Sami and Farid had been informed that the climb down would take four hours, but the brothers were tired and in pain for most of the return trek, so the best they could manage was five hours. They actually felt that climbing down Mount Fuji had been more difficult than climbing up it.
“Somehow we made it and although we were so tired, we felt so good,” said Farid. “It was a great bonding activity with my brother, Sami, and with the Japanese people who were all around us on the hike. It is an experience I will cherish always.”