February 17, 2026
Scroll, stamp, or sweat?
Climbing Mount Fuji visualized through milestone stamps
Mt. Fuji stamp quest has climbers swooning, UX skeptics fuming, and a jogger flexing
TLDR: An artful interactive from the ½8 Journal maps Mount Fuji’s Yoshida Trail through collectible station stamps and folklore. Commenters loved the emotional pilgrimage and bucket‑list vibes, roasted a summit jogger’s smartwatch flex, and bickered over the site’s confusing scroll‑to‑zoom design—beauty vs. usability on a sacred climb.
Mount Fuji gets a glow‑up with a gorgeous interactive from the ½8 Journal, turning the Yoshida Trail into a stamp‑collecting storybook of shrines, deities, and iron‑branded walking sticks—think travel diary meets art museum. The project, led by Anton Sokolov with devs at PixelJam and dreamy backgrounds by Kri Danilina, walks you from the 5th station to the summit, spotlighting spiritual stamps like Fudo Myoo, a lucky tanuki, and even Amabie, the pandemic‑era mermaid‑prophet. But the comments? Oh, they’re the real summit drama.
The top thread is pure feels: bucket‑list dreams, grief‑to‑healing climbs, and a parent planning a third ascent to mark a family wedding. One user calls themselves a “fool” for climbing twice and still wants more—cue a chorus of “same.” Then the villain appears: a summit jogger. One climber says they staggered to the top only to watch a dude glance at his smartwatch and immediately bolt back down. The crowd laughed, winced, and crowned him the day’s accidental antagonist. Meanwhile, the other flashpoint: the site’s scroll‑to‑zoom UX. Some loved the artsy flow, but a frustrated tester cried, “It says scroll, but it just zooms,” calling it pretty but puzzling. In short, the internet split into three camps: the sentimental stamp‑collectors, the UX truthers, and the cardio kings. Ready to try it yourself? Dive in at halfof8.com and see which team you’re on.
Key Points
- •The special ½8 Journal entry documents Mount Fuji’s stations and iron-brand walking-stick stamps along the Yoshida trail, inspired by a 2022 ascent.
- •Development was done by PixelJam with background art by Kri Danilina; the project is presented bilingually (English/Japanese).
- •Fuji-san Mihara shop & lodge at the 5th Station has been a rest stop since 1956; its stamp includes altitude and “Boundary between heaven and earth.”
- •Hanage Ya offers stamps featuring Fudo Myoo (since 2013) and a Tanuki linked to Shigaraki pottery (since 2022); Hinode Kan provides a sunrise stamp and houses an 1826 tea kettle.
- •Tomoe Kan (approved by the prefecture) offers two stamps since 2005, and Kamaiwa Kan’s stamp features Amabie, popular in Japan during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.