52 Fujis #34 – Fujiyama – CityHillsAndSea

Here we are, the end of the line, the last Fuji of phase 1 and the most northerly of them too, complete with a name that sounds like the Big Lady itself – although the kanji are utterly different.

After traveling west by train from Kushiro and ShinFuji (previously on 52 Fujis) I made it up to Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, where I would stay with a gigantic Australian of Dutch extraction. There would be drinking, carousing and a great deal of craic.

Even better than this, the logistics of getting to Fujiyama – which has a train timetable you could generously describe as sparse – was instantly solved as my host had a car and actually wanted to drive up there.

You could kind of see why though once you left the urban sprawl of Sapporo, such as it is, and entered that beautifully empty Hokkaido landscape where hills sweep up to mountains that look friendly enough but then the clouds move, suggesting weather patterns that could quickly change and make things unpleasant for anyone up there.

All this empty space and sullen weather makes you wonder if Hokkaido is really Japan. I’d say it’s a black sheep of the family, prone to mood swings & sulks. It prefers to be left alone.

Fujiyama station was not that hard to find, although it didn’t look much like a station, more like someone’s house with train tracks outside it.

Fujiyama was a pretty unusual Fuji, all things considered, but the practicality and the expense of the trip to Hokkaido just kind of combined with a general sense of foolishness and time being wasted, so I put the Fujis on the back burner after coming back from the trip.

Life then got very much in the way for the longest time – I did a degree part-time in the evenings while holding down a full-time job. In the middle of all that, I ended up in hospital for 2 months when a hitherto unknown immune disease decided it had gone without attention for long enough. So it was that priorities shifted, habits altered and things changed, and the Fujis faded away into just another one of my daft lists.

Eleven years later though, they’d be back with a vengeance. Our next Fuji has a pretty freaky coincidence, sleepy towns, a whole bunch of snow… oh and apples.