52 Fujis #27 & #28 - Higashi-Fujishima & Fujii

My father-in-law’s company keeps a hotel, just for employees, in Fukui prefecture. This isn’t unusual in Japan, and there are probably other hotels dotted around the country where the workers can go and get some down time at a discount. This hotel is very old - we were among the last guests to stay there, as it was decided that the past New Year’s holiday will be the hotel’s last.

All very sad stuff. But what does it have to do with the 52 Fujis?

Simply put, I went on a short break to Fukui, visited 2 of the 52 and got 2008 off to a cracking start.

There were, however, some interesting developments.

We arrived late on the 31st of January - too late for me to walk the forty minutes into Tsuruga city, hop on a train and go exploring the wilds of Fukui in the dark in what were fast becoming sub-zero temperatures. It was decided it was best to leave it until the morning. After dinner, my wife’s family essentially took over and organized everything for me. It was fantastic - like having a combined office staff and cheer leading squad who get most upset when my hand doesn’t hold a beer. It was decided that come the next morning - New Year’s Day - everyone else would visit Eihei temple at the end of the Echizen Tetsudo Katsuyama Eiheiji line, four or five stops after Higashi-Fujishima. Proposals were drawn up whereby I would be left at the station and then meet up with them later at Eiheiji. Grand.

Overnight, it snowed, casting doubt on the rail worthiness of the trains & also the the wisdom of spending time outside a station in rural Japan in the grip of winter. Everyone was quite sure that this wasn’t something I would want to be doing, although I wasn’t actually asked - an unforeseen drawback of having an eight person strong support team. So it came to pass that I arrived and left the first of this year’s 52 Fujis in a car, kind of disrupting the spirit of the 52 a little. This isn’t something I’m particularly upset about - the fact of the matter is, Higashi-Fujishima is another in a long line of Fujis which adhere to the noble tradition of being in the arse-end of nowhere.

Mind you, it had nothing on Fujii, the next day’s Fuji. Fujii is on the Obama line, and wasn’t as Baroque as the name implies. Quite the opposite in fact - the Obama line has one train every two hours; and at some point, the line splits into two. The fortunate souls who live at either end of these later lines have the privilege of getting a train every four hours; car ownership is probably quite high round their way.

I was kind of taken with Fujii station and the cheerful rainbow daubed on the outside of the shelter on the platform. I liked the lane that led up to it, sloping off into ditches and rice fields on either side. I liked that the only other cars were those dinky little trucks that are favoured by farmers. (You can get a feel for it by checking out this panoramic shot from outside the station.) This was truly the most inaccessible Fuji to date, and if you let it, the romanticism of it all could just get too much : I had a daydream about buying a house here living under the watchful eye of those hills, curving lazily into the sky. Winter would be a non-stop carnival of snowball fights, sledding, and eating stew by a roaring fire, with a whiskey to follow.

Then I remembered what happens in The Shining, got back into the car, and settled back down into the long road trip back to civilization.

Fujis remaining : 24
More pics at Flickr: Higashi-Fujishima and Fujii.

Don’t know what the 52 Fujis is about? Check this out.

Thursday, January 10th, 2008 52 Fujis, Japan Trackback URL for this entry