Visitors are making peepholes in Mount Fuji barrier designed to stop obnoxious, selfie-taking tourists
Ain’t no barrier high enough.
In Japan, a tourist town’s extravagant effort to block scenic views of Mount Fuji from foreigners has already backfired.
Obnoxious travelers have poked peepholes through a towering, mesh barrier shielding them from seeing the mountain unobscured.
The desperate measure came after posted security guards were not making enough of an impact on illegal parking, jaywalking, littering and trespassing by selfie-taking tourists showing zero regard for the area.
Since the 8-foot fence with dark netting went up on May 21 at the overrun viewing spot, at least 10 eye holes have been poked through, Kyodo News reported.
“We thought this might happen someday, but not this soon,” a frustrated town official in Fujikawaguchiko, an area west of Tokyo, told the outlet.
“The lives of local residents have been disrupted,” an official told the Japanese daily publication The Mainichi.
“We’ve been pushed beyond our limit by the increase in foreign tourists over the past few months.”
Adding insult to injury, this isn’t a typical case of NIMBY: Many in town do want guests to take in the mountain’s majesty to the fullest.
“They’ve come from across the world, so I want them to get good photos,” said Koichi Ide, 72, adding that he runs a local dental practice that’s been around for 75 years and has previously never had issues with tourists.
However, Ide has recently dealt with blaring car horns and charter buses filling up the clinic’s parking lot without permission.
That’s on top of so many flocking tourists — including a posting bride in a wedding dress — that patients have to fight to get inside the practice.
“I can’t put up with this situation,” he lamented.
In an even more ludicrous turn of events, some tourists are now being drawn to the location not to see Mount Fuji — Japan’s tallest peak — but to check out the barrier, an irate official told Channel News Asia.
“It’s about manners. It’s a shame,” he said.