Fuji

                    The Japanese are loyal to their hometowns. A native of Hamamatsu once told me straight-faced that it was a beautiful city, and that she wished to retire there. I had been to Hamamatsu, and was therefore well aware that it was a rather dull, utilitarian expanse of concrete, home to over half a million people, with little to recommend it other than a pleasant hill-top castle and a sizeable Brazilian community. Even more remarkably, a Japanese colleague once informed me that she preferred the grim industrial city of Fuji, from which she hailed, to Kyoto. Fuji was, she said, ‘quieter’.

              

            This statement struck me as incredible. How could anyone compare Fuji to Kyoto, one of the world’s greatest cities? I spent a year in Fuji, so I write from a position of knowledge, and I can say with no hesitation that my colleague was deeply misguided. A city of a quarter of a million souls, Fuji sits just a hundred miles to the west of Tokyo in Shizuoka Prefecture, but it feels like another world. It was in fact a rather depressing place to live in. I moved there at the end of March 2010, arriving by shinkansen (from Hamamatsu no less) in the company of a drunk Australian, whose first impression was that it was a ‘shithole’. He lasted a mere three months before he quit/was fired and returned to Queensland.

                

Mount Fuji

               While Hamamatsu at least had its castle, Fuji had

practically nothing. Even the view of majestic Mount Fuji, which loomed to the north of the city, was marred by the tide of concrete which swept up its lower slopes. The landscape was replete with factories, smokestacks and soulless architecture. Route 1, the road which led to Tokyo, passed along the southern extremity of the city, close to the sea, where the air was suffused with the pungent and malodorous smell of paper factories. 

               Fuji was, however, not without its curiosities. A single track railway of minor charm, the Gakunan Tetsudo, crossed the city from Enoo, on the eastern edge of Fuji, to JR Yoshiwara train station, which was situated to the south of the city centre. The train usually comprised a single carriage and seemed to attract more than its quota of high school students and very old people. Tickets were printed on cardboard, a quaint touch, although if you got on at Enoo you didn’t need one, for some unexplained reason. The drivers, who doubled as conductors, were irreproachably turned out in uniforms, white gloves and caps, although one or two were partial to a cigarette when the train reached its destination, spoiling their professional image somewhat.

               Riding the Gaku-tetsu gave you a real flavour of Fuji. It took you past the rice fields around Enoo and Sudo, where in summer the evenings resounded to the din of cicadas, over the rocky and generally bone-dry Sudo River, through the dystopian factory district of Hina, and beside the gloomy canals that led to JR Yoshiwara Station. Some of the stations were

Yoshiwara Honchou Station

themselves a little unusual. Yoshiwara Honchou, for instance, comprised a single covered platform separated from a number of dwellings by a train line. I once saw a resident walk along the further side of the line, probably three metres from the platform, and enter his house behind a corrugated iron fence. While the Gaku-tetsu was far from a noisy train, I could never fathom how people could accustom themselves to living a body’s length from a train line.

              

               The nightlife in Fuji was dire. Those seeking a venue in which to drown their sorrows had to choose from one of two principal entertainment districts, neither of which had much to recommend it. The first of these was around JR Fuji station, in the west of the city, where in the evening a handful of suspicious-looking men in suits cooled their heels on the pavement. These denizens of the night would rouse themselves if a group of inebriates happened to pass, and seek to cajole them into squandering tens of thousands of yen in a snack bar. Rumour had it that there was a strong yakuza presence in the handful of streets north of the station, which may have been true, although the only evidence I saw was a couple of besuited and very shady fat men strolling into Mos Burger and acting as if they owned the place.

               The other nightlife hotspot was Yoshiwara Shouten-gai, an arcaded shopping street, and its environs. Here you found more dodgy guys with spiky dyed hair, the occasional group of boozed-up salarymen, dining establishments, and a few awful, deserted bars where you had to pay 600 yen for a beer. My friends and I patronised a few of these initially, before finally settling on a minuscule surfing bar as our preferred hang-out. This establishment, while joyless, had two advantages: the owner spoke English, and he was willing to give a long line of credit to my perpetually skint and intoxicated Australian colleague. There were also massage parlours and ear-cleaning salons, in one of which my Australian friend drunkenly proposed to and was indeed accepted by a masseuse from Taiwan, before being thrown out by the mama-san who ran the place. 

               A friend of mine, who came from Osaka but had moved to Fuji, told me that the climate in Shizuoka was the best in Japan. This was one of the stranger claims I heard while living in Japan, for it soon became apparent that the weather was virtually intolerable between May and September. The

Sudo River

humidity ratcheted up with the arrival of the rainy season, or tsuyu, a time of leaden skies and ferocious downpours that lasted all night, when the rain pounded down with such intensity that I fully expected the roof of my flimsy abode to spring a leak. Following these torrential bouts of rain the air would become less oppressive, but only for a short time, and water would gush over the bed of the Sudo River. The month-long rainy season was the precursor to the relentless sultriness of summer, from which there was no escape. The sweltering heat drove cockroaches indoors, where they scurried along the walls, their hideous antennae quivering in front of them. Enormous dragonflies flew through the sky in groups. The contrast with the mountain town of Takayama, to which I fled one weekend in September and where the nights were cool, was dramatic.

               Still, Fuji was not all bad. It did at least have a Starbucks, although you needed a car to get there. There was also a Chinese noodle shop near City Hall where you could get a plate of gyoza for 100 yen. Even better, there were numerous fine izakaya where you could get pleasantly drunk on beer and ume-shu while snacking on delicious yakitori. Alas, getting home required an exorbitantly expensive taxi ride, for the Gaku-tetsu closed for business at 9.40 p.m.

Practicalities

Accommodation: I wouldn't advocate spending the night in Fuji. 

Restaurants: Bamiyan. Inexpensive and tasty Chinese food, in front of Hon Yoshiwara Station. Staff do not speak English, and may look panic-stricken upon seeing you.

Getting to Fuji: A ticket on the shinkansen from Tokyo Station will set you back 5,240 yen. It's possible (but inadvisable) to take a local train, changing in Atami.