We're making a last minute effort to get away for the US summer and so plan to climb Mt. Fuji over the Labor Day weekend. The two of us are landing on Sat 9/3. Should we wait a day to climb (i.e. start Sun 9/4 and see the sunrise on Mon 9/5) or should we head for Fuji as soon as we get off the plane and see the sunrise on Sunday 9/4?

Is there a more expedient way from NRT to Fuji than heading for Shinjuku and taking one of the express buses? We land at 2pm assuming no delays and could head immediately for the Kawaguchiko-guchi 5th station. I'm not sure if there's even evening buses to the station from Shinjuku since many of the schedules I've looked at on the web seem to be conflicting.

The plan would be to get to the 8th station and hopefully find a place to sit/sleep/eat for a couple hours and then head to the top for sunrise.

Also I saw in prior postings that the shops selling the walking sticks (we want one each for a souvenir and so we don't have to pack our trekking poles) may be closed. Would that be true before 9/5? It appears per the link below, the lockers (we'd leave our carry-ons with stuff we don't want to haul to the top) and shops (for food/water/walking sticks) may be closed by the time we would arrive on Saturday: http://www17.plala.or.jp/climb_fujiyama/shop_info.html