52 Fujis #8 – Fujimigaoka – CityHillsAndSea

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

Fujimigaoka is tucked away in a Tokyo suburb, although I’m not even sure you can call part of the strange conglomeration of townships & cities & neighbourhoods which make up Tokyo ‘suburbs’ in the strictest truest sense.

This Fuji sits along the Keio line, one of the many private train lines in Japan. (Although I guess they’re all actually private train lines, JR still feels like a national railway in some ways.) This is still something about Japan that I have never fully wrapped my head around – trains that terminate in the basement of a department store, owned by the same company which owns the train that brought you. Supermarkets all along that trainline owned by the same company. Convenience stores in those stations owned by the same company. Those companies having their own construction companies, apartment buildings, real estate companies, taxis… It’s a bit of a head melter, but certainly impressive if you’re measuring by the free enterprise metric.

With this multi-level multi-tasking and the convenience that it brings the traveller, the trains in Japan are allowed to give a big two fingers to everyone else. I’ve never seen so many level crossings, and I’d never seen any that are only up for a minute before slamming down again before I came here. It’s awesome – whoooosh goes the train. Bing Bing Bing. Up goes the bar. Five cars go through, a heap of pedestrians potter across. Then – Bing Bing Bing. Down comes the bar again. Repeat ad infinitum.

Fujimiigaoka’s main drag was set behind just such a crossing. As you might gather from the name, Fujimigaoka isn’t all that different from Fujioka – the last Fuji. It has the same kanji as the mountain, and the other two stipulate that you can see it from a hill. Once more, I couldn’t see a hill. Or Fuji. Oh well. At least I had the entrance way to the shopping street :