Day 15: Fishing and Taris at Enoshima

For our last day in Japan, we decided to escape the money black hole that is Akihabara and take a trip to Enoshima, which is the setting for many fine animu such as Tari Tari and Tsuritama.

Luckily, the Odakyu line had a very affordable day pass for about 1400yen (since we all didn’t have much money left).

Enoshima Station

Also at the station are these inexplicably cute lanterns:

Inexplicable.

Also I can’t believe somebody would knit these for the bird decorations outside the station, but massive props to whoever did it:

daw~

Enoshima actually refers to a small island off the coast of the city of Fujisawa. Enoshima Station is actually not on this island, so we walked along a path towards the island proper.

To Enoshima proper

Along the way, you can start to see ads for Tsuritama and some anime movie called “Nerawareta Gakuen” (The Targeted School) which I assume is also set in Enoshima.

Anime pilgrimages bringing in the money.

At some point, you go underground and pop out on a footbridge that crosses the ocean to the actual island. In this area, you can see this map:

Enoshima map

Here you can see how the general layout of the land is: in the lower-left is the port town of Fujisawa (藤沢市) and there’s a bridge to Enoshima (江の島) island. For attractions, there’s the big Sea Candle lighthouse, a shrine, gardens, and an aquarium.

Bridge to Enoshima

There’s a long bridge to Enoshima that lets people walk over there as well as drive (even though there doesn’t seem to be much room for cars over on the island). Since we went on Sunday, it seems like a bunch of people also decided to take the opportunity to visit Enoshima as the bridge was packed with people going in and out. It also seems like scores of people have walked along the bridge, as you could see fun graffiti like this:

Yu-yuri graffiti!?

For those that don’t know, this is an “Ai Ai Gasa” which is a symbol drawn by two people in love. Similar to a heart with two names written into it and carved into a tree or something similar. This particular one has the names Yumiko and Hiromi carved into it. Both are usually women’s names too…

There’s also this:

Promise padlock

These padlocks have messages written on them and then are left hanging on a fence or something similar. Later on, when the promise is fulfilled, the person who affixed it comes back and removes the lock. I saw this practice in Rinne no Lagrange, so I thought the practice was unique to Kamogawa but apparently not. The shops on the island even sell locks so people don’t have to bring their own.

The bridge over to Enoshima also has a great view of Mt. Fuji:

Mount Fuji in the distance

Too bad it was kinda cloudy today, I’m sure the view would’ve been even better if the sky was clear. Apparently, there’s a famous mural of Mt. Fuji that was painted from Enoshima. It’s the painting you see a lot in bathhouses (and anime with bathhouses, lol).

When we actually got to Enoshima, it was still packed with people. The area right at the bridge has a bunch of small stores, restaurants, and food stands.

Shops at Enoshima

Near here, you can see this shop which also has a Tsuritama poster:

Tsuritama poster

Similar to Hanasaku Iroha and Yuwaku, the shopkeeps at Enoshima definitely know that some people are here to take anime pilgrimages (like us!).

I haven’t actually seen Tsuritama (well, actually, I watched the 1st episode and then stopped), but apparently one of the characters yells out “Enoshima-don!”, so here’s one:

Enoshima-don!!!!

For those that are curious, an Enoshima-don seems to consist of egg,  little white fish, and other assorted seafood. Looked tasty, but each shop selling it had it for about 1000yen or so, which was 300-400yen more than I was willing to pay for lunch at this point.

After the shops, we started to go up the steps. First thing you see on the way up is this shrine:

Shrine at Enoshima

Not really interested in the shrine, we kept going up the steps and getting higher into Enoshima. The steps go pretty high, giving some pretty awesome views of the area surrounding Enoshima:

Enoshima from high

At some point, we also saw this really interesting vending machine:

You have entered the Mystery Zone.

If you look at the middle row, there’s a drink that has a question mark label called “The Mystery Zone”. One of my party members decided to try it out and he got a Apple Qoo (which is on the top row). So, it’s probably randomly stocked with other drinks available in the machine.

When you get to the summit of Enoshima, there’s an area with a park and a garden with the Sea Candle lighthouse in it. Unfortunately, the park cost money to get into, and at our collective financial levels, we decided to forgo visiting the lighthouse. We got pretty close though:

Solar panels and Sea Candles

We continued following the steps, which started to lead down in hopes of going back to the base of Enoshima. The path lead to even more shops and restaurants:

Down Enoshima

Along the way, we stopped by a Buddhist temple that had this very red dude:

Red dude.

And this awesome dragon head faucet:

Dragon head.

The path eventually led us to another shrine:

Another shrine @ Enoshima

At this point I think we more or less were on the opposite side of the island that we started on. Apparently this shrine is to some dragon god, hence all of the different dragon statues on the island.

Including this one.

There also is some cave called “The cave of dragon’s love” or something similar.

May or may not be the Cave of Dragon’s Love

There also was a miko selling various charms:

Caaaaaaaatttt~

There were actually quite a few stray cats running around the area. This particular one obviously was comfortable around people. Before this picture, the same cat was following around a guy who was taking pictures of a squirrel in the trees. Shortly after this picture, the miko closed the window and the resulting sound scared the cat off.

Having seen most of the island, we walked back over the bridge. Near the other side of the bridge, we saw this:

Dudes doing a funny dance

It turns out they were members of a local school’s track and field team who had come to the beach to work out. Enoshima is a really popular beach for the Tokyo area. If you’ve seen GTO, the Shonan beach Onizuka hails from appears to be referring to the beach at Enoshima. (Similarly to GTO, there were a bunch of motorcyclists around)

Dudes working out at Shonan beach

Being winter, the activities done on the beach are much more limited, but there were still a bunch of hardcore people windsurfing:

Hardcore windsurfers

We also saw these half-circle things along the beach:

Half-circle things

Apparently they show up in Tari Tari on the last episode (another show I haven’t seen, lol). It’s definitely viewable here too:

Tari Tari @ Enoshima

As it was getting kinda late, and my other two remaining party members wanted to spend more money at Akihabara, we decided to head back around 4pm. Back at Enoshima station, we found a stamp station that let you use a stamp in the shape of one of the heroines of Nerawareta Gakuen, Natsuki:

Natsuki stamp @ Enoshima Station

When we got back to Akihabara, we headed back to Cospa and Kotobukiya so my friends could finish up their last-minute shopping. I took the opportunity to head to Melonbooks and grab a 明日はどっちだ! manga that I had missed from C83 (well, it actually was from C82, but whatever). I ended up using my last paper bill to buy it.

I also took the opportunity while at Akiba to play one last game of Project Diva at Club Sega and Blazblue CP at Hey!. I also finally got to try out this game:

Gunslinger Stratos

Gunslinger Stratos is a relatively new game that is a competitive light-gun game where you shoot other players. The game is net-enabled with nation-wide lobbying, so when you start a game, you are matched up with other players and put onto a team that fights some other team. The game itself has you use two light-guns that can be stuck together in different configurations to enable different weapons. The guns also have analog joysticks on the back of them to allow for moving and target switching.

The game is pretty complicated, I only had time (and money) for one game, so I couldn’t really figure out how to do a lot of things (like melee or tech after a knockdown). I ended up randomly jumping around and going for kill steals (since I’m a terrible person).  It seems fun though, wish I could play it more :<

For my last meal in Japan, my collectively currently poverty party stopped by Sukiya for one last beefbowl.

Back at the hostel, since my flight is at 6:50am tomorrow and the trains stop running around midnight, I needed to get over to the airport before the trains stopped running. So, I prepared all of my stuff and got ready to leave. Had enough time to watch the first episode of Love Live! which is a new anime this season on Japanese TV, which is kinda interesting experience (no subs! lol).

Right now, I’m sitting in Haneda airport waiting for the counters to open up again. I dropped off my Softbank SIM that I rented earlier into a convienent return window (since they’re closed and will be until I leave at 6ish).

It’s definitely been fun in Japan, visiting different places like Kanazawa and Enoshima. It’s also been lots of fun geeking out in Akihabara and even fun suffering at Comiket. Despite currently being really, really poor, I definitely regret nothing from this trip (that might change after I see my bank account, lol). I think I more or less got everything I wanted (besides the Vita parka from the Nanoha corporate booth, grrrr…) too. Now I just need to figure out how I’m gonna fit it all in my apartment in Pittsburgh…

…ph well, that’s a problem for later.