Is there a reason why the Mt. Fuji indicated climbing times are so long?

by François
(Switzerland)

Hey Gary,

I'm a 31 years old french guy, fond of hiking. I am planning my trip to Japan (next week!!) and I found your blog..wonderful work..so many interesting informations, especially for those who want to reach the summit of mount fuji! and actually i am among them! I read a lot of articles on your blog and on other websites and I still cannot properly judge the difficulty of this hike (i'm sure i want to avoid the Yoshida trail but don't know yet which one i will choose).

So everywhere i find all the basic safety informations for hiking (maybe because there are so any tourists with no idea what kind of effort they will have to produce and what kind of conditions they will meet), but i am a little bit doubtful about -the length i have read like 7-10 hours for the gotemba trail. I don't want to show off but I live in switzerland, i'm used to hiking which actually is one of my main interests when I travel.

I hiked in iceland (arctic conditions), in peru (from 3000 to 4500), in reunion island (volcano conditions), all over the alps..and it never took me so much time to hike a +1000... so this is my question (at least! sorry for being so long) is there a reason why the indicated times are so long? i don't want to beat a record, i just want to be fully prepared and know what i will have to face! thank you again for your wonderful blog!

François