May 12th marked the thirtieth year of my existence on this tripped out ball of dirt and water, so I figured there would be no better day to clock up the thirtieth Fuji. I like my birthdays low key, and as it turns out, Fujimicho is about as low key as they come. Like a dozen other Fujis done and to be done, Fujimicho is a part of somewhere bigger, somewhere more important; Ofuna, which is itself part of somewhere bigger, somewhere more important, Kamakura. Nested like a bunch of Russian dolls, you’d be expecting some kind of pay off by the time you’d made it to the centre, something to make it all worthwhile.

Fujimicho station was hardly it - a small, narrow platform that extends to tightly wound stairs, all dressed down in the dullest & most functional grey. Not much to get excited about really, except - the narrowness of the platform and the tightness of the stairs reflect the kind of station Fujimicho is. It’s the first stop after Ofuna terminal on the Shonan monorail, named after the coastline that stretches out at the furthest end of the line.

The first monorail of its kind in Japan, the Shonan monorail opened for business nearly 40 years ago. If you’re into your monorails at all, you might be interested to hear that it’s a SAFEGE monorail: I forget what that stands for, but I know it means that the whole train hangs suspended, swings into the curves and generally feels very much like a commuter coaster. Despite the curves & sways and narrow corridors carved through hillsides, the monorail had an unblemished safety record until recently, when a driver in his first week had a bit of a bump. No-one was hurt and the damage was minimal, but it highlighted how tight the schedules were - the track is a single rail for a lot of the way - with the result that makeshift schedules have been taped over the previous ones, so there’s more room to manouevre, literally & figuratively.

It takes three minutes to get to Fujimicho, so I figured I’d get off there and walk back to Ofuna station, take in the sights. If there were any. There weren’t really, although I did find myself in yet another aquatically themed underpass - just like way back in time at Fujine.

Ofuna’s the last of the great commuter towns that serves Tokyo, a fact I found out the hard way after getting on a commuter express in Shinbashi at 10:30 one drunken Friday night. It’s a commuter express, I told myself, expresses always stop in Yokohama. I managed to convince myself that the train announcement was wrong right up until the train thundered through Yokohama station. Ofuna’s always been better known to me for the large alabaster head of Kannon looming out of a hillside beside the train tracks, a beatific smile on her big white lips. You know you’re getting close to Tokyo when you see it. I’d wondered for the longest time what the deal was with the statue - I’d imagined a body among the trees, something to support the head of a goddess of peace. Some kind of a robed white figure, rounded off with big white feet in big white sandals, poking out of a well-trimmed border of hydrangeas or something. Turns out she’s just a disembodied head and shoulders kind of a girl, watching over the station below, where a myriad trainlines converge and the crowds never quite disperse, even on a weeknight.

Still, the town wasn’t so busy that I wasn’t able to get me a table at the Korean Barbecue restaurant.

Score.

Fujis remaining : 22
More pics at Flickr: Fujimicho.

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

I’ve been filling in for someone on a Friday recently. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse to be honest – takes me an hour to get there, owing to the vagaries of Yokohama’s rail network. (Most of the train lines run west to east. Hardly any run south to north.) The day after I finish up here, I figure out quite by accident, that I could have taken the bus instead.

Such is life.

The place I’ve been working is Nagatsuta – a weird no-man’s land of apartment buildings and little else, save for a train station that lets the JR Yokohama line hook up with the Den-en-toshi line. I detest the Yokohama line, and I’m not sure why. There’s just something about stepping on to the carriages, lit by a weird bulb that seems to make everything glow yellow – a fact which doesn’t improve the look of the offensively green seat covers – that makes me feel instantaneously depressed. The heat is always a few notches to the uncomfortable side of ‘flame grill’ as well, something which never rubs me up the right way.

The Den-en-toshi line, on the other hand, is all right by me. The name translates into ‘The Garden City’ which just makes me remember my mum talking about where she grew up in ‘Derry. Can’t really go wrong with that. Some of the trains on the line are old, but they’re workhorses – the Yokohama line seems to have delusions of grandeur, a fashion victim who survived the 80’s, threads intact, dignity in tatters. The older Den-en-toshi trains look like they’d scrub up fine for a party. The newer ones have flashy whizz bang monitors, running commercials and route information side by side.

Shame it only takes 5 minutes from Nagatsuta to Fujigaoka.

Fujigaoka is Fujinomori all over again. The clouds have gathered and are throwing some raindrops into the wind, getting a feel for it, seeing how they’re going to play things later on. It’s not bad enough for an umbrella yet, although unlike Fujinomori, I actually have one with me this time.

Outside the station, I have a look at the map. Then I have a look about. There’s not much of note around the station. Some shops and a supermarket named ‘Mother’s Garden’. I head to the left of here, figuring I can take a short cut to the park I saw on the map, and walk past a bar that I could have sworn called me a taig, only, when I stop and peer at the sign from a better angle, it looks like Taigi. I give it the benefit of the doubt and head on.

The rain hasn’t broken yet, and there are plenty of cherry blossoms to coo and ah over. There’s also a sign advising people not to practice Dance Dance Revolution in the water :

But the star draw has to be the cat, perched atop a tiny row of railings in the pond, who is on the prowl for some fish; his bravery disappears almost as fast as he does when he sees me.

There’s not much doing in the park, and the rain is holding off. I’m supposed to be meeting the wife for dinner, and that’s not for another hour. I figure I could just double back and head to the next station down the line, Aobadai.

I’m a good portion of the way there when I see the squirrels. They who control Fujinomori were sending me a signal. They know where I am. They may also know what I am doing. It’s lucky I don’t have any interest in golf.

That wouldn’t be the only sign that spoke volumes that day. Oh no.

Opposite Aobadai station is a Wendy’s hamburger joint. The building it’s part of is quite big, and on the top floor is a beauty salon. The sign for this establishment merely said “Beauty Brains FANNY”.

Must do some pretty in-depth aesthetic treatments.

Fujis remaining : 23
More pics at Flickr: Fujigaoka.

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

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.

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.

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

Nothing about Fukuoka is initially at any rate, engaging. There’s a big festival on soon and the snippets we see of the preparations for it are interesting, but I’m not expecting great things from Fujisaki, a little subway station about ten minutes up the line from our hotel.

The station itself is located at the bottom of the Sawara ward civic center (sic), a nice grey building that could have come straight out of Milton Keynes. Inspiration is lacking. I spot a bridge in the distance, and head for it, hoping it will offer an expansive view over some dazzling vista. Or at least, show me something more interesting to head for. It has some nice reflections from the apartment buildings on either side, and that’s about it.

We’re hungry, so we head off in search of a ramen shop as it has already been decided that that’s what a (slightly) sick Mrs.Boyle wants for lunch. The first place we see is deemed too manky; we continue along a busy shopping street behind two women in kimonos shuffling along on their geta beneath classy umbrellas. They stop at a shop where they’re greeted with great enthusiasm by two other women in kimonos. It’s a kimono shop, thus neatly explaining all my questions without too much effort. The next ramen shop we come to is a ma and pa run joint that appears to operate from a converted living room. There are schoolboys at one table, a young business man at another and the counter sees a guy in a polo shirt sitting next to a truck driver. The guy in the polo shirt finishes his ramen and orders some more to take away. This place must be good. Turns out that it is, and the staff actually sound grateful when they thank people for their custom. It’s also cheap.

After lunch we circle around and head back to the station, passing nothing of note except a view of Fukuoka Tower in the distance, a sight that makes me wonder why on earth everyone is so into building towers in Japan. A lot of places seem to have to have a tall building whose primary function is to afford a panoramic view,　the other floors in the building just there for ballast. To cap off this marvellous farce, these buildings are, more often than not, utterly incongruous in their surroundings; they end up being merely a weird tribute to the modern world’s bizarre obsessions.

And a great example of my tax yen at work.

(This Fuji was visited on the 8th of July 2007)

Fujis remaining : 28
More pics at Flickr: Fujisakigumae.

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

From my house to the most southern of the 52 Fujis - Fujisakgumae - it’s a good 1150km. Although the number gets less when you convert it into miles - 715 - the fact that I can comprehend the latter with more ease just means that I was even more astounded by the possible difficulties involved. There was some comfort to be had from the fact that four of the 52 are in Kyushu, within comfortable distance of each other - so, if I did Fujisakigumae, I could do the other three as well. Perhaps over the course of a long weekend… Yeah. Right. I decided I’d put it off.

Until an old school friend of my wife’s decides to get married. In Kumamoto. Right in time for a summer holiday.

Fantastic. The old two birds with one stone thingamajig.

There’s a hairy moment at Haneda airport when we find out that Kyushu is being battered by a particularly savage rainy season, and the plane might not land at Kumamoto airport. It might land at Fukuoka instead. Or just turn around and come right back; the airline hasn’t made up its mind. When it does, the luck that has seen me through up until now doesn’t desert and we touch down in a very wet Kumamoto right on schedule.

The hotel we end up staying in is, by yet more spooky, other worldly guided luck, pretty close to Fujisakigumae. We find this out the night before the wedding, which doesn’t start until 4 in the afternoon; so after breakfast, we set out to walk it - that way we get to explore the city as it comes to. The rain is continuing in a relentless assault, but the path to Fujisakigumae is a Sunny Road - one of those covered shopping arcades boasted by the bulk of Japanese cities. I note as I watch a girl in hotpants and high heels nearly fall on her tiny ass that these arcades also seem to have been built of materials that get very slippery when wet. Which strikes me as rather cruel.

Fujisakigumae station is tiny, and hidden away off the main street. There’s a single train on the platform and I note there’s nothing really to note except that.

We don’t hang around, and decide to pop round the corner to see the Fujisaki shrine. Mrs. Boyle is off in the little girl’s room, while I’m taking pictures of pigeons hiding from the rain. It looks like they’re pretty much the only living things around, then I hear a voice behind me saying “Hi!” in a tone that I would usually consider fighting talk. As ornithology isn’t a crime even in Japan, I turn around and give my happiest “Konnichiwa!” to the big sweaty guy in the pink shirt standing there. He’s taken aback and asks me if I speak Japanese. I tell him a little, hoping that if I have broken any sacred rule that bans pigeon photography within this particular shrine’s confines, he won’t be able to tell me off properly if he thinks I don’t understand. Inexplicably, he then asks me if I speak English. I say yes, wondering where this is going. He thrusts out his hand with two English leaflets about Kumamoto at the end of it.
“Kore wa - This is … pamphletto?” I nod, yeah, we use that word too. “About Kumamoto. A present for you.”
I accept, offer thanks and bow. He gives me a nod then stalks off in silence.

Fujis remaining : 29
More pics at Flickr: Fujisakigumae.

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