Today a trip to the coast on the absurdly quiet light rail system. The subway/train cars are ridiculously quiet. For the amount of people and houses and things packed into every available space around here, it is astonishingly quiet on the train or even in downtown tokyo. I've realized the last few years that I'm sensitive to both noise and people and now tend to avoid either in large quantity and certainly not together. Here, I notice it is generally so quiet I don't even notice, and I tolerate the crowds well. Which leads me to believe it's the noise more than the crowds that bother me. In any case, the general quietude only endears the place to me.
I was practicing writing out the name of each station in hiragana on the way to the coast. I am terrible at it. The 1- and 3-year old I'm staying with have a much better grasp of the language than I do. I may have to take a class or 10 when I get back. But I'd like to learn at least the basic hiragana and katakana first.
Enoshima is a little island just off the coast with a decent sized hill covered with plants and tourists with a large shrine and garden at the top. There's essentially a long path starting with the short footbridge, along a narrow tourist zone with delicious food and knick knacks for sale. A large, red torii marks the start of the shrine proper, which is a hell of a lot of steps, with opportunities to honor one's ancestor's at every level. It is a long walk up to the top with many wonders on the way. And then a walk down, past a buddhist temple area, past more eateries, past more knickknacks, to enoshima cave. From there, we take the ferry back to the mainland for 400 yen, because we ain't walking 2 tired kids and 4 pooped adults back up and over that hill. This was the correct choice.
On the initial approach to the shrine, there is a sign for Dr. Fish. 500 yen for 5 minutes. Dr. Fish is a tiny pool filled with tiny fish that nibble the nasties off of your feet. I cannot resist. They swarm my ungainly gaijin feet as soon as they hit the water. It feels a weird combination of a massager hitting every part of my foot at once that is also shooting a tiny electric current over the skin of my feet. The cumulative effect of 100 tiny fish lips nibbling on my flesh. To be honest, my feet feel amazing and I feel great afterwards. Thank you Dr. Fish!
The family in the lower left was just finishing up their picture when I took mine. I can't get over the "what are YOU looking at?" face the kid was throwing at me. The whole moment just seems perfect. I love it.
Enoshima cave is fantastic. Cave 1 has ancient statues of the buddha and the gods and a shrine dating back to 550 AD. The area with the statues is dark and small, so you are given a wooden paddle with a small candle and wind foil/paper wind shield to light the way. There is a plastic cover protecting you from the weeping archway, the water cascades down either side of you as you pass through. Cave 2 has a wishing dragon that flashes lightning if you make a wish, strike the drum and leave a coin. Two lightning flashes, and your wish has been heard. I love it to death. But I only have a 500 yen coin, which I don't leave behind, so I suspect the dragon has already thrown my wish in the water.
I am half-passed out on the return train, but this is not unusual for the Tokyo train system. We eat dinner at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant so popular they've hired a parking attendant to direct traffic. The sushi is much better and much cheaper than a comparable meal in Portland would have been. The touchscreen sushi menu for direct orders is a particularly nice touch.
Tomorrow, the shinkansen to Kyoto!
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