Enoshima

Had a great day out in Enoshima yesterday. Enoshima is South of Yokohama, it is an island a few hundred metres off the coast but connected by a rather ugly looking causeway. The nearby Shonan beach is extremely popular with surfers and windsurfers. Enoshima, like any dignified tourist attraction in Japan has its own collection of temples and shrines, stretching up and over the steep sided island. But fear not! Multiple escalators will whisk you to the top at a cost of what looked like around a 150 yen / approx £1 each. We took the stairs, which enabled us to feel less guilty about essentially only eating donut based snacks for lunch.

It is said that on a clear day Enoshima has a view of Mt. Fuji, however it was pretty hazy so were lucky just to see back to the mainland. There's a big tower that you can go up, you have to pay 500 yen for the pleasure, but you do get entrance to the Samuel Cocking Garden too (we were too busy sniggering to bother finding out whether that was worth it). We didn't really see the point of paying that money to see nothing in quite heavy wind, so spent more than twice the amount on beer and deep fried potatoey things.

Prayers or wishes, either way the Japanese pay good yen for bits of paper to write on and tie to a fence. I don't know what happens if you write on your own bit of paper and tie it to the fence. Maybe it will be removed. Maybe they get removed at the end of the day anyway. Or when it rains.

Thousands and thousands of padlocks of love, we didn't have a padlock to signal our undying love, but we did ring the bell (very romantic, both held on to the rope, swung it, and winced as it was a lot louder than expected). Discussed what it signified that I had a padlock at home that I didn't know the combination for, and what happened when these people split up, or what it meant if you attached your padlock to another padlock.