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It’s 2007 when I first visit Fujisawa. It was a longish trip from Fuji City, where I was living at the time. I was meeting up with an old friend I hadn’t seen for a long time. We used to work together in Numazu and then he’d moved on elsewhere. As, I suppose, had I.

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 on that day 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 before this trip 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 can go to a dragon’s 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. The kind of things that make you wonder how one goes about becoming a sculptor and whether being good at it is actually as important as you typically might believe.

After wandering around the beach, I made my way to a station, and got mixed up. I hopped onto the Odakyu line, another one of those private train lines that are operated by department stores in Japan.

In 2007, I was labouring under the impression that Odakyu owned the Enoden, one of Japan’s oldest trainlines connecting the Fujisawa burbs to the big dumpling in the ocean. (Hence the name – the ENOshima DENtetsu, or Enoshima Railway.)

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. (NARRATOR VOICE: It wasn’t.)

Fujisawa Honmachi is just a small station one stop from the main terminus of Fujisawa on the Odakyu line, and it seemed to be the older part of Fujisawa. (NARRATOR VOICE: It is.)

Fujisawa, like Fujieda, and Fujikawa in Aichi, used to be one of the stops in the days of old when the only Tokaido line was the road from East to West Japan.

The station is set back a bit from the main road that runs from Kamakura all the way to Hiratsuka and beyond, a road that once marked the start of the pilgrimage to Oyama, I think. There’s still a lot of old buildings down the back streets around the station, and signs showing the whereabouts of temples, and other items of historical interest which I wasn’t particularly inclined to visit in 2007.

Fast forward to 2020. I live right next door to Fujisawa. I went for some groceries at a supermarket there the other day. The weird little dumpling in the ocean, Enoshima? I’ve cycled to it after work for a bit of a head purge on many an occasion.

The Enoden? Know it very well, now, thanks. Try not to ride it on public holidays & weekends but do like a little trip around some of its lesser frequented spots. Koshigoe is a favourite at the moment, there’s a great couple of restaurants out the front.

(I still haven’t made it to those items of historical interest yet though. Usually if I’m up that way on my bike, I make for the riverside and cycle on down to Totsuka.)

As for my friend who I stayed with over a decade ago? Well, these days he’s a doctor in the UK; he sounded fine the last time I heard from him, and I hope he stays that way.

So in many ways, Fujisawa & Fujisawa-honmachi have a little more kick to them that my nondescript notes and account above might not reveal. In fact, it’s only something I’ve recently started to realize myself.

It’s starting to feel like these daft tales of journeys to random stations around Japan will coalesce, in the end, not into one story about about cool undiscovered parts of the Japanese countryside; rather, they’re merging into one narrative about how life takes you to places you never really expect, despite any plans you might have to the contrary.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing: it just is what it is.

FUJIS LEFT AT THE END OF MARCH 16th, 2007 : 39/59