If you take the Nankai Koya Line, on the long climb from Hashimoto toward Mount Kōya, most passengers are focused on the destination, or on the wonderful views from the train windows.

Few people notice the small stations that slip quietly past the window. One of these stations is Kii-Kamiya Station, just one stop from the end of the line at Gokurakubashi. To be honest, if you blinked, you’d miss it.

I’ll get straight to the point: I love this station. There’s nothing around here, and even the station itself only has the most basic of facilities, but that’s the point. It’s isolated, quiet, relaxing, peaceful, and it’s wonderful.

The station is a very local station, tucked quietly into a fold of forested hills, but as I said, it’s on the Nankai Koya line, the railway that serves Mount Kōya, and as such it has significantly more frequent services than other stations of a similar ruralness. Even so, only local services stop here. The limited expresses pass straight through. I’d say ‘rush through’, but the station’s location on a sharp curve means that there’s not really that much rushing.

Kii-Kamiya was opened in 1928, and is basically just an island platform in a cutting. It’s unstaffed now, and it’s difficult to imagine it ever having been particularly busy. In 2019, it was used by an average of just 13 passengers daily. The station exists because once upon a time, it must have been deemed necessary, but now, that necessity appears long gone.

I can think of any number of more dramatic stations, but Kii-Kamiya is just quiet, hidden almost. When the train leaves, its sound fades quickly into the hills, and the station is left in almost total silence again, broken only by the muted sounds of nature. The platforms almost feel suspended in green silence.

Kii-Kamiya isn’t a destination. There’s no reason to get off here. And sometimes, that’s exactly what makes a station worth getting off at.