Today we went to Enoshima.
Enoshima is a tiny island off the coast, a little further than Kamakura — which we’d visited earlier with Mama and the rest of the family, but didn’t have enough days at the time to explore further. Onkar had told us to go then, and it felt like a big bucket item to check off on my last full day in Japan. I was still deep in FOMO mode, clinging to the super-tourist productivity mindset, determined to get as much done as I could before I left, and still a little shaken by the realization two days ago that I only had three days left when it felt more like a week.
I probably don’t even need to say it at this point, but yes, we left the house a couple of hours behind schedule. At this point, routine is just too far gone. It’s unsalvageable. I’d planned to get an early night the night before, and even though I was mega-tired coming back from Kawagoe and at Donki and all the way up to and even through my meeting, I somehow gained energy once the family came back home and didn’t end up sleeping until 1 or 2 in the morning.
If we’d done the Enoshima trip while we’d been in Kamakura earlier, it would’ve been a very short journey. But from our place in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, it was first a 1h30m train to Ofuna, where we reached around noon, and then a bit of a walk to the 15-minute monorail.
Dad and Bua had recently taken the cable car in Hakone — basically a compact train going more uphill than usual, as Mom and I had done with Mama and the gang earlier, and we didn’t expect this to be much different. It turned out though, that this one was a cabin hanging from, as the name suggests, a single track line above the train, meaning that the box we were in was effectively dangling. It wasn’t too far above the ground, so it didn’t trigger my fear of heights (which I’ve been facing more and more, recently), and was actually a super fun ride.
The town below was quite compact, for want of a better word, making the monorail an intelligent infrastructure choice as it didn’t take up any street-level space. Mom was gleeful — she’d seen this all over Instagram but thought it was only in Chiba, the outskirts of which we’d stayed in briefly but hadn’t had a chance to get on the monorail.
We got off at Enoshima Station, which wasn’t on the island itself but across the bridge on the mainland. It hadn’t been long since we started walking towards the coast that mom had a fall.
The pavement was slightly elevated in comparison to the road, and she hadn’t noticed while stepping between the two, losing her balance and taking it to the ground.
It was clear that it hurt. A lot. She hurt one shoulder specifically, and it took a minute for her to even be able to get back up, with Dad’s help. Her jacket thankfully prevented her elbows from getting scraped, and the backpack she was carrying (and fell upon) saved her head from hitting the ground, but the shoulder was a problem.
Dad made her move her arm forwards and back to check if it might be dislocated or fractured, which it fortunately wasn’t. Still, it was a rough fall and we all suggested taking it easy for the day, going home perhaps. But nope. No way was mom ready to do that.
Even in the clear pain, she insisted she wanted to go and see what we’d come here to see.
Mom’s fall in Enoshima felt like a metaphor for everything she does for us.
She was clearly in pain, but she climbed all the way to the top anyway, just so the rest of us could get the full experience. And this has been the story of the entire trip. She’s followed my itineraries, eaten vegetarian food with me even when Japan’s meat options are so temptingly good, and never once complained. She’s always put me first.
As much as I’ve gone on about adjusting to the rest of the family (and complained about having to), she’s probably adjusted the most for me, and never even said a word about it. I say that she’s the person I’ve been most compatible with, but it’s all thanks to her and the compromises she makes, always putting me first.
And it’s been easy to reciprocate because she makes me want to. She hasn’t shopped much for herself at all, and yet her suitcase is overflowing because she hasn’t refused to take a single thing I couldn’t fit in my own suitcase back with her.
She loves fiercely, and I strive to be capable of feeling that deeply, that selflessly, someday.
Her shoulder hurt throughout the day today. On top of that, she’d forgotten to apply her pain relief ointment and wear her knee supports that morning. But she never once complained about all the stairs. In contrast, she was positive about them, talking about how she could climb them more easily now than when she’d flown in from India, and that all the walking and climbing and general activity in the country had improved her health and knee problems.
It was a long walk with many, many stairs indeed, with shrines, gardens and a beach on the way to the Enoshima Iwaya Caves that were our first planned destination. The journey itself was beautiful, and the caves didn’t disappoint. There were two, connected by a bridge — small, dark tunnels with frames hung describing the history of their formation and the legends they tell (these caves are said to be connected to Mt Fuji’s caves!). There was a mini-shrine at the end of the first one, where we were each lent candles on a stand, and a statue of the dragon god at the end of the second, which was lit up artificially with fairy lights all over the ceiling — both beautiful sights.
On the way back we planned to see the observation deck, Enoshima Sea Candle. But because we’d arrived in town later than intended, all our plans were set back a few hours and the shopping street we’d passed on the way up (with a name-engraving chopstick shop that we were interested in in particular) was going to close soon. The Sea Candle was open late, but and we figured sunset would be the time to go if we did.
We’d seen many observation decks throughout the trip, and we’d seen stunning views of around the island earlier in the day already, but Onkar had strongly recommended going up the Sea Candle and it had been on our list right up until the point we realized we could only do one of the two — catch the deck view before the sunset, or go to the shopping street.
I knew Mom really wanted to do the candle too, not as much because of what it offered but more because Onkar had recommended it. Still, she could see that I was in favour of the shopping street, and it ended up being decided that we’d tackle the street first, and then come back post-sunset if people were still in the mood and see the night view.
Realistically we both knew that that most likely wouldn’t happen. It was Fuji we were most interested in seeing and the only chance on that cloudy day was seeing a silhouette at sunset. Once again, we ended up doing what I was more in favour of, without mom making me feel the slightest bit of guilt about it. When I even did feel guilty about it on my own and suggested coming back to the candle later, she began rationalising against her own choices, talking about how we’ve seen enough observation decks and how it’s cloudy today anyway and the candle’s too far back up a hike to be worth coming back to.
That’s how the evening panned out, and we didn’t end up going to the Sea Candle again. The shopping street didn’t turn out to be as fruitful as it looked promising on the way up through it, but we did find one gem — the chopsticks name engraving shop.
Some context: Bua and I had been trying to find a little bit of time away from the parents to shop for anniversary presents for them, but hadn’t been able to so far. We’d planned on going to one of our favourite variety stores on the way home when we went back to Ikebukuro, and we had an excuse for it ready — souvenir shopping on Onkar’s behalf, like he’d asked me to do. Mom would definitely insist on accompanying us for that part out of FOMO, but I planned to make up some reason or the other to send her and Dad home ahead of time so that Bua and I could shop for them too. In the worst case, since it was such a large store, we could check out once in secret when Mom and Dad weren’t around and keep their stuff in bua’s backpack.
We still didn’t know exactly what it is we were going to get though, and it would’ve been much of a spontaneous choice, potentially not even a good one. But here, at the chopsticks shop where the plan was for me to get my own name engraved on chopsticks (Onkar had gotten one during the 2017 trip), Mom and Dad stumbled upon a section with Chinese zodiacs on them.
Mom’s being a dragon and Dad’s being a rat had been a fun running theme for us over the past few days since we’d all discovered our Chinese zodiac animals and how eerily accurate the personality descriptions were, and even though they were only browsing and didn’t actually want to buy anything, I’d just found the perfect anniversary gift.
I still couldn’t decide on which pair I wanted my own name on. The rat and dragon Zodiac ones looked really cool, but the ones with the horse zodiac (mine) were too cartoony for my taste. After 20 minutes of my indecision, Mom and Dad went on ahead to see the rest of the shops which were bound to close soon. Finally, Bua and I were alone.
As soon as they left, I hurriedly paid for the rat and dragon chopsticks, giving the lady at the counter both their names for engraving in English and Japanese. I pulled out my phone to make sure I got the Japanese right but the lady handled most of the transliteration into katakana herself and in the end I only provided a couple of corrections based on how the words were pronounced in Hindi (she wrote based on the English pronunciation).
In the 10ish minutes it took to engrave their names, I managed to settle on my own choice too and submitted that for name-carving — partly because I was anxious about Mom and Dad returning, and needed to have their chopsticks hidden and mine still in progress, to avoid them realizing how long I’d taken and what I’d actually been up to.
Bua was on lookout the whole time, making sure they didn’t show up early (and also coming up with suggestions to help me decide on my own chopsticks because I was just taking that freaking long).
They came back right on time — after I’d tucked their engraved chopsticks into Bua’s backpack and while mine were still being worked on. Since they didn’t know it only took five minutes to engrave, they assumed that that was the reason for the hold-up, not my indecision. Worked for me.
Dad, for his part, had gone off and bought a wooden katana. He’d mentioned earlier in the day that he liked one he saw and would get it on the way back. With his new sword and the massive skull ring we’d talked him into buying at a souvenir shop earlier that day, he looked absolutely wild — like some kind of gangster monk hybrid.
He flaunted it in all of the day’s pictures, making me laugh out of nowhere every time I looked at it and took in the bizarreness of how my father looked in it after seeing his hands bare all my life. He literally doesn’t even wear his wedding ring, reason being that it gets in the way of his doctor work. But he’s retiring from medicine soon and hasn’t been at work this whole trip so finally he’s opening up to the idea of wearing them, I think. I hope he wears his wedding ring too when these guys get home.
It had gotten dark by now, and after double checking with everyone that no one was willing to do the half-trek back up the mountain to the Sea Candle, we set off downwards towards Enoshima Island Spa, where we planned to use the onsen.
It was a natural hot water spring (albeit inside a hotel, but the source was still natural), and it was my last chance to use an onsen — something that’d been on my list throughout the trip.
I had been on my period the last few days and today was my last full day in Japan. Tomorrow would be too hectic (with going to the airport and all) to realistically fit this in. It was my first day period-free again and the only day left that I could take the dip.
We arrived, and to our dismay, we were met with signs saying that the entire facility was closed for a period of 4 or so days, including today. Damn Google Maps and its opening times. When will I ever learn to phone up ahead of time?
There was nothing we could do, and I accepted that the onsen was just something I would have to save for my next trip. At least it’ll be a funny story to tell, that my next trip to Japan is driven by the desire to sit in a hot tub naked with strangers.
We had yet another train mishap on the way home, and ended up getting on a local train instead of a rapid express, getting delayed by a good half hour and ruining our plans to go souvenir shopping back in Ikebukuro. By stroke of luck though, the station we got off at from the local train had another branch of the same store we planned to visit, Daiso, and it was actually open an hour later than the Ikebukuro branch.
I managed to buy all of Onkar’s stuff there, as well as two chopstick rests that matched Mom and Dad’s zodiac chopsticks to give alongside them.
Mom and Bua did some gift shopping of their own too, and Dad went to a neighbouring electronics shop, Bic Camera, and got a handheld weighing scale, something this particular Daiso didn’t stock and something we were in dire need of if I wanted to avoid any nasty surprises with my flight coming up the next day and no other way to weigh my luggage.
When we did finally get to Ikebukuro, mom insisted that I at least get the conveyor belt sushi experience I’d been wanting one last time, even though I had given up on it by now and was willing to just go home and pack.
Somehow, Dad and Bua also agreed to give us company this time, and so we soon found ourselves at Kappa Sushi, a cheap conveyor belt sushi diner. It turned out to be a very nice and wholesome dinner and all of us, Dad and Bua included, found something we liked to eat. It was near closing time too so we were in and out in about 40 minutes.
There was a 24-hour massage chair place near our Airbnb that Dad particularly loved because it helped relieve his back pain. He’d been there a couple of times, but wasn’t too indulgent and would refuse most times we’d offer to stop there with him on our way back home.
Today, I insisted he go. I told him to assume it’s an anniversary gift from me, and that Bua and I wanted to get food from the supermarket across the street anyway so we’d get that done instead of waiting around in the meantime. We told Mom to join to keep him company, and that it might feel good on her shoulder after the fall too. They weren’t the easiest pair to convince, but somehow with Bua and my collective stubbornness, we managed it.
We did go to the supermarket — first. We quickly picked out a cake and rushed back home to get things in order for the parents’ anniversary surprise.
I laid out a tray with the cake, candles (the same ones we’d used for Onkar’s birthday celebration a few days ago), some chocolate that Dad was particularly fond of and of course, the chopsticks. It was a bit of a mishap that we accidentally left the chopstick rests we’d bought at Daiso in the bag that Mom was carrying, but it was too late to do anything about that now.
We turned the lights off and waited for Mom and Dad to arrive. It was only a little after 12am — perfect. The plan was that when we heard the knock, Bua would go and stall them in the hallway while I lit up the candles.
At first, they were confused when they saw the same red envelope that they saw my chopsticks come in and asked why I was giving it to them. They realized what was happening a moment later though, and I was glad to see they genuinely appreciated the gift and the surprise.
It was a small thing I did for them, but I felt good. I can never give back to them as much as they give to me, but it felt nice to do something — anything — that made them smile.