52 Fujis #25 & #26 - Fujitana & Fujinoki

The last two of the Kyushu 52 weren’t so easy to get to. Timewise, there wasn’t that much in it - maybe an hour or so to get there, but there seemed to be a million different permutations of how to do it. We settled on a shinkansen to Kokura, followed by a local to Nogata, where we changed to the Hesei Chikuho line, a one carriage diesel engined fiend chugging with no sense of urgency at all to the world of nothingness.

Or rather, Fujitana.

Another of the 52 Fujis where I feel like I’ve walked in to someone else’s house and they might come home any second, to find me there, all apologetic but still in trouble. Fujitana added to the mix by having the most overgrown train station yet. It also stepped up things a little more by having the rustiest train station to date.

I didn’t stay long and caught the next train back. Which set a theme for the next Fuji by involving a rather over elaborate trek to get to the return platform, which, in the case of Fujitana, was situated down the road, through a tunnel, and left a bit.

Fujinoki started off with a bit more promise - the maps showed it was close to the sea, although I was pretty sure those were industrial docks with no vagabond gaijin access permitted. In the end it didn’t matter; we got a brief walkabout in before the heavens finally got back to rainy season, though we’d had the foresight to make it back to the station. The only problem being you have to walk to the end of the platform, make your way across a little level crossing, and then walk the same distance back on the other side. So we got soaked.

Never mind. We’re now halfway through -

Fujis remaining : 26
More pics at Flickr: Fujitana and Fujinoki.

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Friday, August 24th, 2007 52 Fujis, Japan Trackback URL for this entry