On a free day, if I find myself anywhere near Mount Fuji, I usually head south and find a quiet spot by the tracks.
You can sit there and watch the Shinkansen come through, the mountain rising behind it. The trains arrive on schedule, cut across the landscape, and for a moment each one lines up perfectly with Fuji before it disappears. Then it goes quiet again. Then another one comes.
I have spent hours in that spot without really meaning to. I do not plan it. I do not bring a checklist or a shot list or an agenda. I just sit there, and the trains go past, and the mountain stays where it has always been, and somewhere in the rhythm of that I stop thinking about anything else entirely.
There is something about the combination that I find difficult to explain. The speed of the train against the stillness of the mountain. The precision of the timetable against the indifference of the geology. One of them was built to the nearest second. The other has been there for roughly 100,000 years and is not especially concerned with either of us.
I always end up staying longer than I intended.
Copyright © Tales from the Horizon, 2026
