Ganso-muro — Local services in Fujiyoshida

I'm not a small person, so this review may be skewed. But first, let me say that the place is fine for what it is: a place to get out of the cold and rest the night 10,000 feet up on the side of Mt Fuji. For one price, they let you stay, for a higher fee, they feed you a dish of chicken curry and rice and hot tea (but no water.) For an even bigger price, they give you an additional small packed meal as a breakfast, which you must take to bed with you and presumably use as a pillow. ||Beds are double rows of plywood shelves that have sleeping bags on them and small plastic coated cushions to use as a pillow. You must fit yourself, your pack and possibly your breakfast in the space provided.||The problem is that they pack the sleepers together so tightly that you cannot lay in your back without your elbows overlapping the next person's on both sides. The bags are overlapped by 30% and you have just maybe enough headroom to sit up in bed if you are not tall. The wooden shelves are hard, and you will find yourself in pain before long, and wishing to turn onto your side to relieve the ache, only to find this task daunting without waking two people up next to you. if you do manage to get onto one side, it too will start hurting before long, and you will need to turn again. |The average person is in bed at 7-9 pm and wakeup call is a 1:30 am, so at best you will get a few hour nap here, for 80$ a person average, but you will be lucky is you manage to actually sleep half of this time. It was the most uncomfortable night if non-sleep I had on my recent trip.|Some decent cushions, and fewer guests per bunk would fix most of the difficulty, but this would cost the operators money, and they know they're going to be at full capacity in season whether the guests are comfy or not. Honestly, I think the Mt Fuji volcanic gravel outside would have provided a softer rest, and would have been free. If I had been alone I would have slept beside the trail in a bag. This place does get you out of the cold, though, and it does get cold up here.||It's a high altitude hut, and you can get altitude sick in it, even resting. The hot tea helps. ||They do have free wifi, but it's gonna cost you your email address or facebook name so you'll probably have that sold to spammers eventually. They do have a few outlets and they don;t complain when you charge your phones.||Like all the huts very high up, drinks are expensive. Bottled water (small) is...

I'm not a small person, so this review may be skewed. But first, let me say that the place is fine for what it is: a place to get out of the cold and rest the night 10,000 feet up on the side of Mt Fuji. For one price, they let you stay, for a higher fee, they feed you a dish of chicken curry and rice and hot tea (but no water.) For an even bigger price, they give you an additional small packed meal as a breakfast, which you must take to bed with you and presumably use as a pillow. ||Beds are double rows of plywood shelves that have sleeping bags on them and small plastic coated cushions to use as a pillow. You must fit yourself, your pack and possibly your breakfast in the space provided.||The problem is that they pack the sleepers together so tightly that you cannot lay in your back without your elbows overlapping the next person's on both sides. The bags are overlapped by 30% and you have just maybe enough headroom to sit up in bed if you are not tall. The wooden shelves are hard, and you will find yourself in pain before long, and wishing to turn onto your side to relieve the ache, only to find this task daunting without waking two people up next to you. if you do manage to get onto one side, it too will start hurting before long, and you will need to turn again. |The average person is in bed at 7-9 pm and wakeup call is a 1:30 am, so at best you will get a few hour nap here, for 80$ a person average, but you will be lucky is you manage to actually sleep half of this time. It was the most uncomfortable night if non-sleep I had on my recent trip.|Some decent cushions, and fewer guests per bunk would fix most of the difficulty, but this would cost the operators money, and they know they're going to be at full capacity in season whether the guests are comfy or not. Honestly, I think the Mt Fuji volcanic gravel outside would have provided a softer rest, and would have been free. If I had been alone I would have slept beside the trail in a bag. This place does get you out of the cold, though, and it does get cold up here.||It's a high altitude hut, and you can get altitude sick in it, even resting. The hot tea helps. ||They do have free wifi, but it's gonna cost you your email address or facebook name so you'll probably have that sold to spammers eventually. They do have a few outlets and they don;t complain when you charge your phones.||Like all the huts very high up, drinks are expensive. Bottled water (small) is...

Gansomuro was a good choice of mountain hut. Be aware, there is definitely no English spoken here. We had to book by phone in Japanese from Australia before we left. On arrival the staff explained everything in Japanese. However, they understood how to speak simply to gaijin with limited language and ensured we understood everything.||||These mountain huts are not hotels! They are for overnight hikers and are really really cramped. You get enough room to lie down and sleep - and that's it. You're literally shoulder to shoulder with the next guy. Gansomuro sleeps about 200 people in two big dorm rooms on huge double bunks. They provided a sleeping bag, small plastic covered pillow, and an extra blanket if you need it (which we didn't). I used the towel I brought to wrap the pillow to make it more comfortable.||||There is no bathroom and they provide no towels. There's just the public toilet accessed from the outside of the building, which all the other hikers going past can also use. However, the toilet is clean, works and has a couple of hand basins.||||Gansomuro is relatively new and very neat and clean inside, which is a surprise given how dusty the mountain was outside. It was comfortably warm.||||We were served with a simple meal of curry rice about half an hour after our 5pm arrival. They have to serve dinner in multiple shifts because the common areas are definitely not big enough to serve everyone at the same time. Besides, you need to get to sleep early because you will be woken at 2:00 a.m. so you can set out for the summit to arrive just before dawn. Dinner was simple curry rice, soup and tea. Brekky was a very simple rice bento, which was given to us at dinner time so we could pack it ready to head out promptly in the morning.||||Based on looking from the outside into the other huts we passed, this one seems to be similar in style to most, and perhaps a bit newer. It's everything you need to take a warm and comfy rest on your way up the mountain, and nothing more. If we were to climb Fuji again (not really likely, but doing it once was great), we'd happily use this hut again. Overall Gansomuro fulfiled it’s brief admirably and we thoroughly...