Enoshima Island

One day, we traveled to Enoshima Island. The legend surrounding Enoshima can be found here (along with some really fantastic photos), the short version is that they're big on dragons.


On the way, we saw this:




On the wee ferry to the island from the mainland (we walked the bridge on the way back, so it's not a very long ferry ride)


There are several caves on the island. The iPhone doesn't take good low-light photos, so bear with me.



In one section, we were given candles for navigation.


Watch for low ceilings.

Some of the deity-related statues (example above) were neat, some were serene, most peaceful. The Dragon Cave statue, however, (below) was pretty darn spooky.


Even after I adjusted the levels in Photoshop, it's still pretty creepy.


Outside a temple on top of a hill:


The dessert we had with our dinner: sno-cones topped with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. An unexpected combination, but not at all unwelcome in the heat.


In front of another temple, some peaceful-looking statues...


Right next to two of these. Eight-foot-tall scary statues. I'm assuming they're scary to ward off evil spirits.


Up more stairs and around the corner, we stopped to watch a street magician. Not a top-notch performer, but it was entertaining. We couldn't understand his jokes, but he did some juggling, some mime, some audience participation, and some sleight of hand.

Gift Shop Alley. I picked up some souvenirs here.



After working our way down to the water from the gift shop alley, the sun started to set and we realized we had a really clear view of Mount Fuji from where we were. Some of the following photos will look alike, but I was so taken with the beauty of it all that I had to take another photo every few minutes. These photos don't really capture the brilliance of the colors, but it's the best I could do with what I had.








People were lined up along the bridge and pulled their cars over to the side of the road to take pictures, it was so stunning.






When we got back to our home train station, we found a firefighter festival of some sort in progress. The side of a building was covered with rows upon rows of red lanterns, all illuminated as a backdrop to this guy on taiko drums. It was pretty awesome.