A small forested hill glowing in warm dusk light, standing in for Mt. Fuji.
富士山下 ・ Fujiyamashita Station

The Wrong
Mt. Fuji

2012. An unstaffed platform. A river the color of green tea. A mountain that was one hundred and sixty meters tall, and entirely correct.

In 2012, I took a wrong turn in Japan, and it led me to a station called Fujiyamashita — "Beneath Mt. Fuji."

You can guess what I expected. The name was right there on the sign. I stepped off the little two-car train onto an unstaffed platform beside a green river, looked up, and waited for the great mountain to appear.

It didn't. The real Mt. Fuji was a hundred and thirty kilometers away, in another prefecture entirely.

But the station was not lying. Right behind the platform stands a mountain named Fuji — all one hundred and sixty meters of it, with a stone stairway and a small shrine at the summit. It is one of Japan's "local Fujis": for centuries, towns that loved the great mountain named a small hill near home after it, so that anyone — the old, the busy, the ones who would never make the pilgrimage — could still climb a Fuji before dinner.

A hand holding a train ticket printed with the station names Nishi-Kiryu, Maruyamashita, and Fujiyamashita.

西桐生 → 富士山下 ・ ¥170 ・ kept ever since

Here is my favorite part. The year after my wrong turn, Mt. Fuji became a World Heritage site — and travelers from all over the world began stepping off at this tiny platform, looking up, and laughing, exactly as I had. The railway laughed with them: climb our Fuji, they said, and we'll mail you a summit certificate. They even made a TV commercial about the mix-up.

I didn't just take a wrong train. I was a year ahead of the whole world's wrong train.
The local Fuji hill at Fujiyamashita station, warm and small against the sky.

160 meters. One stairway. One shrine at the top. Close enough to climb before dinner, which was always rather the point.

A wrong turn, on schedule

01

2012I step off at Fujiyamashita expecting the great mountain, and find a hundred-and-sixty-meter hill wearing its name instead.

02

2013The real Mt. Fuji becomes a UNESCO World Heritage site. Travelers everywhere start making my exact wrong turn.

03

Since thenThe railway leans into the joke — climb their Fuji, and they'll mail you a summit certificate. There's even a commercial about it.

I found out something the maps don't tell you: this country keeps a Fuji near every home. And some wrong turns are just the world showing you the part you didn't know to ask for.