Mount Fuji: why a small Japanese town is hiding the big tourist hotspot

Name: Mount Fuji.

Age: Formed 100,000 years ago.

Appearance: A blank rectangular expanse.

But not now? Residents got fed up with tourists crowding the pavement, parking illegally and littering.

What are they gonna do? Pull down the mountain? They did the next best thing.

They built a 3,776 metre addition on top of the store? No, they put up a black mesh screen, 2.5 metres high and 20 metres wide, to spoil the view.

Stupid tourists. Their numbers have certainly become a challenge. In a continuing post-pandemic boom, monthly visitors to Japan topped 3million for the first time in March and April.

That does sound a lot. Japan had sought to break the pre-pandemic record of 31.9 million visitors annually by 2025, but it now looks as if that could happen this year.

How will they cope? A