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....

There is a common saying about Japan's tallest mountain: "A wise man climbs Fuji once. Only a fool climbs it twice." There's another tradition that everyone should climb Mount Fuji at least once in their lifetime (perhaps with the intention to become wise, if there's any merit to the saying). Making the trek myself has always bee on my unofficial "bucket list" of things I wanted to do in Japan. Last year I scheduled days to attempt the climb -- twice! -- but was thwarted each time by inclement typhoons. This year, the climb was absolutely going to happen. A few weeks before my own attempt, my coworker, Shaun, climbed Mount Fuji for the first time under the expert guidance of another coworker, Oscar. They made an incredibly entertaining and insightful podcast episode about the entire process (which you can listen to  here ). I took a lot of good advice from Shaun about what to pack for the climb, which Troy, his dad, and I were going to do overni...