I hadn’t intended on syncing up the cadence of my Japan postings with my life back here in Seattle when I first started, but when I saw that it was possible, I really wanted to talk about Enoshima today for reasons that will soon become clearer.
Christine had asked for a day trip out of Tokyo, and Suzi suggested Kamakura as a popular destination, so we added that to our list. As the time got closer to plan our itinerary in more detail, I noticed an island a little bit outside of town that seemed dedicated to all things dragonic; knowing Christine’s love of that lore, from fantasy to church hagiography to her Chinese zodiac, spending most of our day there seemed like a no-brainer. And it ended up being one of the highlights of this whole trip.
The weather was atrocious in the best way possible; it wasn’t raining that hard, but the winds blowing across the Sagami Bay once we traversed the island and walked down to the Iwaya Caves leveled it up by a lot. It set the mood perfectly for what we would find inside.
The mythology of this island is ridiculous. Written in 1047, the Enoshima Engi tells the story of a village plagued for a thousand years by a five-headed dragon (Gozuryu). In response, the Goddess Benzaiten raised the island of Enoshima to dwell among her people, or to imprison him, depending on the version, and the dragon was immediately smitten. He asked for her hand in marriage, which she rejected, choosing instead to persuade the dragon of the error of his ways. Thoroughly convicted, the dragon promised to do better and turned into a hill facing her island home.
We read this story on a plaque under the Bell of Ryuren on Lovers’ Hill, where people leave little love locks facing the sea. In that version of the myth, the goddess ends up marrying the dragon.
It’s a strange bit of lore for a tourist destination that felt perfect for our convoluted gesture; in some ways, you could say that our whole trip was about bringing our cute little lock from MochiThings and ringing that bell—today’s our 10th anniversary, making this whole month an extravagant celebration.
But I didn’t know the story before coming here, and as we were reading it in the lashing rain, I chuckled to myself at the unexpected resonance.
Part of my proposal to Christine all those years ago included going to the least romantic place in Lebanon imaginable to illustrate and offer my heart, personified by the chaos and tumult of Dora, Beirut’s informal transit hub. That was the second piece of the metaphorical claddagh I was forging. And that’s the dragonic part that still lives inside.
Christine, to be absolutely cringe, you’re the Benzaiten to my Gozuryu, and I can’t wait to see where we end up ten years from now. We laugh and we cry and we pet cats and we tell stories about rocks in the lake while organizing our lives around naps and waxing poetic about the rainbows we encounter on the random roads we find ourselves on.
This decade feels a lot less random though, doesn’t it? That feels good. I’m happy to have you as my travel companion. Yalla. On to the next thing.
I must say, my favorite thing about Enoshima Island is how popular it seemed to be among locals and tourists from around Asia. There was a noticeable shift in the occupancy of the much-loved and over-stuffed Enoden train from Kamakura, as all the Europeans disembarked at the same station and we kept going to the stop for the island. The train itself had a lot of fans too, as you’ll see in a video I’ll post shortly.
The famous Enoshima Enoden train, where everyone seemed to be wearing green that day. The railway even has its own gift shop. Naturally, we got something for ourselves. x