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52 Fujis #19 and #20 - Fujisawa & Fujisawa Honmachi

Back on the road again. And this time it’s seishun juhachi kippu season, so you’d think I saved a shedload of cash today. Well, no. Not really. The seishun ju-hachi kippu is really cheap, but to use it just for a trip that only costs 1500 yen seemed like a bit of a waste.

Fujisawa isn’t that far from my house, and yet, even though a friend of mine has lived there for a long time now, I’ve never gotten round to visiting him there. Last night I sorted that out though - bit of binge drinking, bit of banter, a slow coming to the morning after; all the ingredients for a grand night out.

Fujisawa is a large town sprawled along the coast. A lot of the people who live there are mad keen surfers - as I walked about today there was at least one balcony on nearly every apartment building with either a wetsuit or surfboard drying. There were even people out trying to surf today, a glum, plodding day with not much wave action that I could make out. (Then again, I’m not exactly famous for my grasp of balance sports…) What I never realized about Fujisawa was just how close it is to Enoshima, the small dumpling shaped island linked to the mainland by a road, and very popular with tourists owing to its oldy worldy feel. (Kind of like a mini Kyoto by the sea.) But I didn’t bother going there today; as picturesque as it is, it’s not really that interesting. Even if you do go to the dragon cave.

Instead, I hung around the beach and took a few pictures of the random odd things one seems to find in every single Japanese town, city or village (there must be some part of the constitution that goes like this - “article xiv. Citizens will only feel at ease if there is a substantial amount of bric-a-brac scattered around the streets.” I mean, seriously :

There were also lots and lots of signs berating people for leaving dog poo about. Some of these signs featured anthropomorphic dogs carrying their own poo in bags, while others just settled for a speech bubble coming out of the dog’s arse saying, “Poo? Noooooooo!” I now have a worrying amount of poo signs in my flickr account. On a plus note, I did get to see a cool tsunami warning sign, and a car park for council vehicles right next to the beach that boasts a badass tsunami protection door:

All the sea air tired me out, so I went to Denny’s to have my traditional hangover cure breakfast - a B.L.T - which, unfortunately, the Denny’s in Aichi don’t have. Luckily, Kanagawa is a lot more with it, and I set off for the Odakyu train line a happy man.

The Odakyu line is another one of those private train lines that are operated by department stores in Japan. This particular Odakyu line, the Enoden, has a romantic image, as it runs through the Fujisawa burbs to the big dumpling in the ocean. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why; I spent most of the ten minute journey to Fujisawa Honmachi replaying all the conversations I’d ever had with anyone about the Enoden in case I had missed a vital clue. I decided to just settle on the possibility that this line wasn’t the actual romantic Enoden. I had gotten mixed up.

Fujisawa Honmachi is another of that breed of 52 Fujis that is fair enough if you’ve just come from another of the 52, but would be a big disappointment if you’d gone all that way just for it. It’s a non-descript station, just one stop from the main terminus of Fujisawa, and it seemed to be the older part of Fujisawa, with really, really, really old buildings, and signs showing the whereabouts of temples (I am all templed out, so tough luck - no photos) and other items of historical interest. Fujisawa, like Fujieda, and Fujikawa in Aichi, used to be one of the service areas in the days of old when the only Tokaido line was the road from East to West Japan. I was thinking about this fact today when I remembered the kanji for Fujisawa is 藤沢 - another wisteria based Fuji, and mused on the possibillity that all these places named after wisteria might have something to do with locals demonstrating their allegiance to the Fujiwara clan, who basically ran a lot of Japan for a long time, many moons ago; then I came to the conclusion that it was probably more likely to do with there being wisteria around those places, even if I couldn’t see it.