7-year-old boy left behind on Mt. Fuji by his own dad

Police not pleased with plan of leaving elementary schooler unattended for hours on Japan’s tallest mountain.

“This summer, I hiked Mt.

Fuji with my dad!” sounds like a pretty cool opening for a kid’s how-I-spent-my-summer-vacation essay.

The composition gets less heartwarming, though, if it concludes with “And then I got to meet some policemen after he abandoned me on the side of the tallest mountain in Japan.” And yet, that’s exactly what happened to a 7-year-old boy from Nagoya on Thursday.

Early that morning, the boy, his 48-year-old father, and his older brother (a first-year middle school student, making him either 12 or 13 years old) had started their hike up the Fujinomiya Trail .

At somewhere around the trail’s sixth of 10 stations on the way to the summit, the younger child became fussy, complaining that he was tired .

At this point, the obvious options would be either to offer some words of encouragement to the tuckered-out tyke, take a break so he could rest and recover his stamina, or, perhaps, to simply accept that taking a 7-year-old on an attempt to summit Mt.

Fuji was a flawed plan from the start, and so head home.

Instead, Dad decided to tell his younger son “Wait here,” after which he and the older boy continued hiking towards the top of the mountain .

It’s not like the summit was just a hop, skip, and a jump away from where the dad abandoned his flesh and blood, either.

According to the Mt.

Fuji Climbing Official Website, it takes a little over five hours to hike from the Fujinomiya Trail’s sixth station to the peak, and slightly more than two and a half hours to walk back down there from the top.

That means the dad was counting on a 7-year-old to sit tight and keep himself safe on the mountain for at least seven and a half hours , and likely longer once you factor in any time spent by the dad and older brother on rest breaks, taking photos, or admiring the view at the summit. ▼ Approximate ascent hiking times on the Fujinomiya Trail Thankfully, the younger kid didn’t end up having to do that.

At around 7:40 in the morning, a worker at a mountain hut near the sixth station spotted the unattended boy sitting by himself on a bench.