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

The first two of the 52 in 2008 were in Fukui prefecture, coincidentally also home to last week’s tenshu.

Twelve years ago I was married, and my then father-in-law worked for a rather large & rather famous Japanese company. Some thing you may not know about Japanese companies is that, once upon a time, they all really looked after their employees. (I’m sure some of them still do.) Part of this particular company’s caring for employees deal was a few hotels dotted around the country where the workers could go and get some down time at a discount.

So it was that former father-in-law wangled a stay at the company’s hotel in Fukui prefecture for New Year 2007 and the adventures began.

We arrived late on the 31st of January – too late for me to walk the forty minutes into Tsuruga city and hop on a train to go exploring the wilds of Fukui in the dark, particularly in what were becoming sub-zero temperatures. 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 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 2008’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. It is instead, incredibly rudimentary – 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. I had a daydream about buying a house here and 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.

Then I remembered what happens in The Shining and got back into the car.

FUJIS LEFT AT THE END OF JANUARY 1st, 2008 : 32/59