52 Fujis #52 – Fujisan

Don’t know what a 52 Fuji is? Check out this page.

We’ve reached 52! The original number.

What better way therefore honour this historic occasion than to … visit a Fuji I had already been to?!

If you remember Fujiyoshida, you might also remember that the station changed its name to Fujisan / Mount Fuji station. I imagine this was done to boost tourism or something, but … well. Perhaps making some other changes to the place might also help with that? This is the first thing you see when you come out of the station, 14 years ago and today:

Although they did fix this sign:

I still thought at this stage that I would be leaving in April – the pandemic hadn’t really taken over the planet at this point. There was a guileless, naive sense here that it’d all be over soon, although I’m not really sure how we all came to that bananas conclusion. Good old cognitive dissonance, I suppose.

I still needed to finish my list before I left, so with a mask or two from my precious stash, I settled on travelling from Shinjuku to Fujiyoshida aboard the Fuji Excursion / Fuji Kaiji train. That name was too much like pure poetry to resist.

Owing to train delays, I lost the poetry but found serendipity; the delay meant I accidentally arrived at Otsuki just in time to board the rather plush Fujikyuko Fujisan View Express, a tourist train which stops for a minute in the middle of nowhere so you can get a magnificent view of Fuji in all her glory.

Adapting my plans to this different train line also meant I could get off at Shimoyoshida and visit the Chureito Pagoda, a five storey peace memorial and part of the Arakura Sengen Shrine – which, if you recall, is the group of shrines dedicated to the goddess Fuji.

This pagoda is instantly recognizable by pretty much anyone who’s ever seen a travel ad for Japan. It seems to signify everything people want to believe about the mysterious East; an exotic building, surrounded by nature and in the shadow of Mount Fuji…

… the reality is, that even out of cherry blossom season and during a global pandemic which reduced the number of visitors greatly, there’s a lot of people just waiting on the viewing platform for others to get out of the way so that they can have their turn to take a picture.

It is, nonetheless, a beautiful view, especially on a crisp spring day, and it wasn’t hard to forget all the worries of a world gone a bit bonkers.

With my plan all over the shop at this point, I opted to walk into Fujiyoshida rather than bother with public transport.

I’d decided to stay the night here, just because the first time I was in Fujiyoshida, I missed out on a great festival because of the vagaries of public transport, the casual indifference of the work week to my daft lists & poor planning on my part.

There was, however, no festival this time, so I didn’t have too much to do. I did get to see a cracking sunset though.

I got up early, had breakfast, wandered up to the Sengen shrine at the north of town.

As you can see in the gallery below, there really isn’t much in Fujiyoshida, if you don’t have a car to get you places. I enjoyed the fresh mountain air & the fact that a trip to the foothills of the big girl herself was my number 52, but Fujiyoshida isn’t much of a travel destination for anything other than a day trip.

The next Fuji though would be quite a journey, and absolutely, one hundred per cent worth every minute.

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#52 FUJISAN GALLERY :

FUJIS LEFT AT THE END OF MARCH 19th, 2020:

8/60