Rice and Ramen

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds....

This is the last in my unofficial Golden Week Adventure Series (#GW2018? Anyone?). I  sort of got lost ,  walked amongst some history ,  and felt very, very small . For the last day of Golden Week I returned to someplace I'd already been before: Kamakura. I was last there in January of 2011 (also with  Troy , come to think of it--I'm sure there's an old blog post about the experience buried in the archives somewhere) but was excited to return with fresh eyes and new perspectives. Kamakura is perhaps best known, nowadays, for its own Daibutsu, albeit one that is minuscule in scale compared to the one at Ushiku. Since Troy and I visited that statue the last time, we elected to see some of Kamakura's other sites, taking advantage of the weather to walk the streets of the city and truly get a feel for its flavor. Our first stop was  Hokokuji Temple , a zen temple built in 1334 and known for its bamboo garden, where there are apparently over 2,000 sho...