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What can we say about Fujieda? Not a whole lot, really. It’s a nice enough town, with a football team that apparently they’re quite proud of, judging by the station decorations:
It’s laid out in the traditional Japanese station fashion with one exit leading you to the side of the station with taxis and seemingly very little else; the other side takes you out to the shopping district, such as it is, and an area where you can – if you’re fortunate – catch a bus.
I wasn’t, on this day. My original plan was to get a bus and go and visit a park on the outskirts of town that looked … well, less boring than the station area, at any rate.
Sadly, I’d just missed one. I didn’t really think I could find much to occupy me around the station for a couple of hours. It was therefore, on to Plan B: travel back down the train line to a neighbouring station which, while not actually in Fujieda town, was within walking distance of an old castle site that was.
It was still very very warm in Japan where September is typically just a less brutal version of summer. Luckily, there was a cool breeze a-blowing as I traipsed up towards where the former Tanaka castle was situated.
Unluckily, it looked like the breeze was bringing in a storm.
Most of the area where Tanaka castle used to be is now a school. I found a couple of points of interest connected to the castle, but I never did find the rebuilt parts of the castle that I’d seen in photos. A combination of factors conspired to make me give up the search. I was hot and a bit tired; I was getting hungry, and the possibility of a half hour walk back to the station amid a downpour was not something I was particularly in the mood for.
If I’m being honest though, the primary motivator was rising anxiety about being picked up by the police, since I seemed to be spending an extended period of time walking back and forth around the perimeter of a school with a camera.
In lieu of a solid dose of rebuilt history then, I just settled for enjoying the walk around Fujieda and the rising satisfaction of realizing how tantalizingly close I was to being utterly done with the Fujis.
FUJIS LEFT AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER 4th, 2020 : 1/60
#59 FUJIEDA GALLERY
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