Leaving Tokyo - Enoshima

So, I neglected to tell this story last time, but on our way to Kawagoe, V fella sleep on the train. She was leaning on me when this giant nondescript black bug flew into the car as the doors closed. It buzzed back and forth, bouncing off all the windows, and I tracked its movements intensely. Suddenly, it flew above my head and I lost all sight of it. For the next minute or two I nervously glanced around the car trying to figure out where it had gone, when a train from the opposite direction came whooshing by and startled me quite severely. This shook V awake as well, but she fell back asleep soon after.

A similar situation happened today when we got into a packed elevator and a spider-like insect suddenly took off from the ceiling and started buzzing closer. Before it got to V's head (she couldn't see it), I smacked it away and then spent the rest of the elevator ride in a frantic, wondering where it had ended up. Moral of this story: nothing worse than unusual bugs in enclosed spaces.

The second half of our day-trip agenda was 江の島 - Enoshima . I found Enoshima while browsing potential destinations and discovering that this beachy island was small enough to cover in a day. We once again headed out later than planned. Today was a day more reminiscent of summer with temperatures in the low 80's. Really nice weather for visiting an island, actually.

Enoshima is accessible by the Odakyu Line trains which run quite regularly. You need to transfer once, but a one-way ticket costs you only 610 Yen and it takes something like 75 minutes to get there (less if catch an express train). The Enoshima train station is actually listed as one of the top 100 historical stations in Japan. I guess it's kinda cool.

I was pretty tired by the time we actually there, so I went to buy an energy drink and decided to try Ripobitan D which I had seen basically everywhere. It worked pretty well since I didn't start to crash until we took the train home that night, but it tasted like Flintstones chewable vitamins crushed into non-carbonated Red Bull...awful. For 120 Yen though, it's a fairly inexpensive way to genki yourself up.

We arrived at 2:30ish and went to the tourist center to pick up some maps and the Enopass. I had previously read about the Enopass and I'm so glad we decided to get it. It basically allows you unlimited access to the island's escalators, gardens, lighthouse, and caves. Usually, each site will cost a total of 1350 Yen, but the Enopass will only set you back 1000 Yen. More importantly you get to skip all the lines and flash your pass through like a VIP. I would pay 1000 Yen alone for this feature. I don't think many people knew about the Enopass either, making us even more balla.

You can cross to the island either by bridge or by ferry. The ferry is just a little boat which will cart you to the back of the island for something like 500 Yen. This is not a good idea; the escalators are a very convenient way for you to travel up the island and skip all the stairs. So going to the back of the island is actually all downhill, it's the way back that's rough. Hitting up all the sites one by one on foot and then ferrying back to the bridge is the better way to go.

We didn't do that cuz the ferries stop running fairly early. We basically trekked through the island and hit up all the big tourist attractions and stopped by all the shrines just to take pictures.

The first thing you see when setting foot ashore is a resort hotel and a shopping street. The resort hotel allows public admission for use of its hot springs, but we chose to forgo that today and got moving up the island. We probably didn't start up Benzaiten Shopping Street until around 3:00 PM and our objective was to hit up the Samuel Cocking Garden and the Iwaya Caves before they closed at 5.

We looked at all the trinket shops briefly but really wanted to get some random crap to eat first. The famous things to eat on the island are steamed red bean buns and tako senbei. So I don't know exactly how they make these buns or why they're so tasty, but we were heavily considering taking a bunch to go. The problem is that cooked buns just don't last so we kinda just ate them on the spot hoping we could grab more later.

A few moments later we got to the ridiculous line for tako senbei. Senbei is a type of Japanese rice cracker, usually taken with tea. Except whenever the Japanese make something dry and hard (like a cracker), they just call it a senbei. The line for tako senbei went past the front of the stand into the store next door and doubled back into the next aisle. So probably like fifty people waiting for what looked to be some labor-intensive food.

First they take octopus that's been flavored or marinated somehow. Then they bread them and place them onto the giant press. Four small octopi populate a single press, which has been oiled down on all sides.

Then they close the press and seal it shut by turning a handle to tighten the press. This results in the octopi screeching as all the moisture from within gets squeezed out. They let it fry up for a bit and then open it to seal the holes left in the process.

Then they remove the square piece, trim the edges, and cut it in half to produce two servings. Each piece costs 300 Yen and you're only allowed to buy two freshly made pieces at a time. We bought some pre-made ones to go as well.

End result is 幸せ - happiness.

Then it was onward up the slopes of the island. The first set of stairs lead you to Enoshima Shrine, where you can pay patronage to the resident deity of Enoshima, Benzaiten. Benzaiten is generally regarded as the goddess who bestows monetary fortune. But on this island at least, she has an obvious relationship to love.

We continued up a series of escalators to the top of the island where the Samuel Cocking Gardens and the lighthouse sit. The gardens were built by Englishman Cocking in 1880 when he bought a bunch of land in Japan and built the European-style garden for his wife. Evidence that even 130 years ago, Japanese women were high maintenance. OH Snap! October is the wrong month to visit this garden because none of the flowers are abloom. It's really just a small collection of shrubberies at this time of year.

Continuing down to the other half of the island we passed by dozens of stores and restaurants that litter Owaya-michi Street, which is just all the staircases to the caves. All these people clearly live on this island and make their living off of tourists. It's crazy how people actually just live there. I wonder if they have to pay to use the escalators.

There are shrines all over the island, but we just snapped quick pictures trying to get to the caves before they closed. I'm actually really glad we made it there because the views from the rear of the island are amazing. I climbed this rock to show off to V. So did that baby next to me.

We spent at least half an hour maneuvering through this side of Enoshima. It was pretty pleasant because we basically got to see the entire sunset. We also got to take a million artsy sunset pictures. Actually, I think we took 300 Mb worth of pictures today.

The caves aren't normal caves either. There are small shrine statues at every corner. Also they give you these cool candles to light your way. The cave is pretty tight and you need to watch your head, but when you get to the end you find a dragon statue with this cool story about how Benzaiten was actually a maiden on this island that was being sacrificed to the dragon. The dragon instead fell in love with her and her condition on marriage was for him to be a nice dragon. Peace and love...the end.

At this point, I think I realized how many couples there were around us. There's clearly a large draw for couples to come and pray for their love. That's why we next headed back up the dastardly stairs to the 恋人の丘 - Ryuren no Kane - Bell of Dragon's Love. On our way back I sneaked this picture of this puppy we had stalked all the way across the island. Hiii puppy!

We made our way back up all those goddamn stairs to the top of the island to get to the dragon bell. The shop at the bottom sells locks for you to write your names on and then "lock" in your love. Ahaha. The grandma selling us the lock gave us some markers to write onto the lock with, and she insisted that we draw a heart onto the lock and take a red marker...you know to draw the heart with. The heart definitely had to be in red.

So we climbed a couple more stairs and emphatically portrayed our love by smacking the crap out of that bell.

We then wrote up our lock all proper (red heart and all) and left it there for everyone to see.

The last order of business was the lighthouse which we had saved until it got dark. I must say that somehow we rushed through Enoshima a bit, but managed to schedule everything perfectly. The lighthouse has an elevator that takes people up and in said elevator is where the insect incident occurred. Otherwise, it was really pretty.

We spent most of our trip back to the front of the island petting cats. For some reason, Enoshima is known as a place where people from Tokyo come to abandon their cats. So, there are stray cats all over the place. They actually seem to be well taken care of and are all very friendly and pretty fat. There are donation boxes as well for you to help contribute to save the cats. Apparently the bigger problem is that some cats aren't neutered and can overpopulate the island if left unchecked. V was indiscriminate in her cat petting making sure that every one we saw got a turn.

Back to the shopping street we picked the most popular looking restaurant, Takoshima, and waited for thirty minutes or so for another one of Enoshima's famous foods, しらす- shirasu. Shirasu are actually just baby sardines and the way that it's served there is with ikura on top of rice.

I actually went for the set meal with all sorts of shirasu crap and V ordered the shirasu-don with salmon. We also ordered the raw shirasu sushi to try and an Enoshima Beer. I'm pretty glad we ordered just the small pieces of sushi because shirasu itself doesn't have much of a taste raw. We both thought it was better when cooked and seasoned a bit. The Enoshima Beer was some of the best beer I've had in Japan. Obviously microbrewed with sediment still in the bottle and a nice full taste.

My entire set was delicious and enormous. It basically involved everything they could possibly make out of shirasu. It was great, but I don't think I like shirasu all that much because after that meal, I am already so sick of it. V's donburi was really good too, but the ikura was actually kind of unbearably salty. This is sad since V loves ikura.

Enoshima was a ton of fun and we didn't even get to visit any of the spas or beaches. I did eat Mango-Apple ice cream though. Tasty tasty. We probably don't need to come back and see all of the sights again, but it's quite close to Tokyo. There are festivals and such which occur periodically so it would be great to come back if we are also in the area to check out Kamakura or something. Our best little excursion so far. Hooray Enoshima!