52 Fujis #53 – Fujinami (Ishikawa)

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The Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture is possibly the most rural of the rural places in which to go hunting for a Fuji station. I mean, Fukui comes close… but nah, Noto got it beat; for the simple fact that the Fujinami station in Ishikawa was on the long dead Noto Line & has been closed since 2005.

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Noto Railway, the company that used to run the Noto Line, is still around and they have trains that get you tantalizingly close to the old station. You still need to get out at Anamizu though and catch a bus.

However, there are not many on the schedule: perhaps four all day going in the right direction. Once there, I only had a forty-five minute window to find the former Fujinami station & make it back to the main road, otherwise it would have been another three hours until the next one, and there was very little to occupy me. (Not keen on my tennis.)

The bus stop is still – 15 years later – named after the station it used to serve:

In fact, as the bus chugs along roads that wind up & down hills through woods, past fields, along roads taking you around the coast and through isolated farming communities, the old train line is largely visible and mostly intact.

The tracks are still there, waiting & hoping for some kind of magic to bring the line back to life.

It doesn’t seem like there will ever be enough of a hustle or a bustle up this way to rustle up that magic. Cars are now the transport of choice to get to the various boondoggles built way out here in the actual middle of nowhere :

(L – R: the tennis museum, the sports ground & the Noto Wave)

Found the station easily enough, in pretty good repair, considering its age:

But it wasn’t really the station I was looking for. There was something else I’d seen on the internet, something hiding under a bridge. I wasn’t sure it would still be there. (The last photo I’d seen was dated 2015.)

However, it was.

Turns out it’s not just the track that’s waiting for the line to come back to life.

Funny how a Fuji with the wrong kanji that isn’t even open any longer turned out to be my favourite (so far.)

#53 FUJINAMI GALLERY

FUJIS LEFT AT THE END OF MARCH 27th, 2020:

7/60