By the time we’d finished wrapping up our 13Gb environment for transfer to Finland on Friday it was around 9pm – disk bound tasks on unstripped disks are not much fun. Still, it did mean I got invited to join some of the guys at a local ‘Italian’ restaurant. The food looked Italian, but tasted Japanese, with all the fishy badness that goes with traditional food here. My boss found a fish free baked onion on the menu so I had that. Retiring from the restaurant we headed to the Black Lion, Meguros British pub, to join another party of Nokians. Sawa-san got visibly less scared of me as the evening progressed, and I was again acosted by a Finn, this one a cross between sushidog and Margret Thatcher, which is every bit as disturbing as it sounds. There were a few raised voices – I’ve never seen Japanese drunk people being particularly loud before – but I think everything was sorted out by a Finn used to dealing with that kind of situation. The last train had gone by the time I plucked up courage to run away, so I ended up walking home.
Then yesterday morning I got up early to meet with some of the guys from work for a trip to Enoshima. They’d been delayed by the time I got to Yokohama, so I killed some time in Tower records before they arrived – I got a compilation of Korean indie music, which has yet to be listened to, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. They are running a scratchcard promotion at the moment, I was presented with a tray, a metal ‘coin’ and a card when I paid, with the obvious intention that I scratch then and there – I didn’t win anything (a couple of points on the bonus card they give you).
After a little while the guys turned up and we headed on to Ofuna to transfer onto the monorail to Enoshima itself. Just over the valley from Ofuna station there is a large statue of a head, which probably warrants a little more investigation at some point, and certainly a photo or two. The monorail runs through suburbia, suspended from a concrete track in the sky. The area is mostly flat with odd little hillocks every mile or so, the whole vista is built up with little detached houses.
The monorail takes on a rollercoaster feel as it descends into one of the hillocks – we’re underground, but we’re suspended from the ceiling, which is odd but I guess it shouldn’t be. Popping out of the second such tunnel we arrive at Enoshima station, where our fare adjustments with 10k notes were met with concern by the stationmaster, must remember to break at least one note before I hit the provinces again.
Enoshima has a typical seaside town feel to it – in many ways reminiscent of somewhere like Deal – with the road from the station to the seaside being full of tacky seaside style shops. The island is joined to the mainland with a pair of causeway style bridges, for cars and pedestrians.
Arriving on the island there are more shops, getting tackier as we progress up the hill toward the first of the temples. There is an impressive gateway which somehow gets itself lost against the hill. The temples are all of a similar nature here, this one is the largest of the three on the island, and has the usual little market area around it with people touting prayers and various other religious symbolry. There was an unguarded tray with a space on one end for money and prayers on the other, and a little note to say that they were 200yen each – I guess stealing a prayer would negate any positive effects such a prayer might bring.
Further up the hill we found a small garden with a couple of friendly cats. At the summit was the Cocking Memorial Garden, with the remains of a fabulous greenhouse complex, a Miami Beach viewing area (where you could look back toward the mainland) and a lighthouse. None of the labels on the plants made any sense, but they don’t make much sense to me back home.
From the top of the lighthouse the context of the island became clear – it is a small island in a huge bay area with the coastline stretching for miles in each direction, beyond the coast to the west the Hakone mountain district and Fuji are visible through the mist, to the north is suburbia stretching beyond Tokyo and Yokohama to the east.
All around the garden are wind generators and solar panels, just outside the lighthouse is a display showing the amount of power currently being generated – 2.1KWatts at the time we were there, the wind was getting quite gusty by that time.
Leaving the gardens we continued along the path toward the headland, the island is split by a large gorge between two different sets of volcanic rock. Past some more shops there is another temple and finally some steps down to some viewing areas – from which we get a wonderful view of the sunset and Fuji through the mist, this is what classical Japan looks like and it all makes more sense now.
We head down onto the beach after sunset, vcubed had been itching to get close to the sea. The beach is rocky but I couldn’t work out whether it was real or manmade – the rock here is volcanic so it takes on that look of concrete thats not been properly formed, but there was a drainage grid in the middle of the beach, which didn’t seem like the kind of thing that nature would have left there, but equally I couldn’t work out why it was there.
Getting back up the steps and across the island was traumatic, I must get myself fitter…still, at least there were lots of cats to play with on the way, and they were mainly quite friendly. I was amused, also, by the number of escalators on the island to help people getting to the temples. They seemed quite expensive, considering, around 350Yen, you can get a train journey, with as many free escalator rides as you want, for 130Yen in Tokyo.
It was dark by the time we got back across the bridge, and the weather was getting angry, throwing waves around. We went to investigate an interesting looking area across the river from where the bridge returns to the mainland, to discover another station, this place has too many stations this is the third we’ve found so far, this one by far the prettiest of them, obviously dressed up as a tourist attraction in itself, more classical Japan.
This was the first proper outing for the video camera too, so I’ll have to go through the footage I got sometime – what I’ve seen so far has a very 8mm feel to it somehow.
Today I met up with Nobue-chan for a meal with her friend Kikuko-chan, it was lovely to meet her and we all had a good afternoon talking about work and travelling and everything and agreeing to teach each other our languages.
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