Keep it Simple!

The Japanese would not like what I just did - DELAYED blogging about the 3rd part not by an hour or a day but an entire month! But before you sentence me Yūzai , let me tell you life is not easy for a lazy person like me 😐

Before I begin, let's pray (*closes eyes*) - O God, please give me the strength to recollect and remember the names of Japanese cities, places, food, names we encountered. We are your big eyed children who ventured into land of your tiny eyed children. Amen! (*opens eyes*)

The 3rd day was a day of migration from the uptown Tokyo to a sea facing district called Fujisawa with an adjoining island named Enoshima. We identified this place based on recommendations by some travellers & AI engines. However we finalized this placed based on its location on Google - "Sea facing place with a connecting island". That's it, no further research needed. The entire gang was sold out to this idea :D

After our long train ride from Ochiai to Fujisawa, we were super hungry and planned to have lunch near the station itself before taking a connecting train towards Enoshima. Google maps to the rescue - we found *wait for it* *drum rolls* Namaste restaurant serving Indian food! The restaurant itself was 2 buildings away from station building in a basement. We were expecting that the owner of the restaurant would be some turban clad Punjabi and the restaurant would be filled with hungry Indians like us. This is what we saw - restaurant was run by a Nepali family and was filled with Japanese people, some of them local school children happily eating Kulcha and Paneer butter masala. The only things Indian in that restaurant was the food (was yum! to be honest) and the Bollywood songs they played for Indian vibes. The place was definitely an unexpected treasure trove serving amazing Indian food and I definitely left a part of my soul there. At the end of the meal, all I wanted was a bed to drop and faint and sleep.

A few of our carnivore gang members had gone to Kugean to have Japanese food (remember - when in Japan, do the Japanese). So we again met at the Fujisawa station to proceed towards Enoshima. 

Now I have to mention the Enoshima line, it is one of the most beautiful routes in Japan. The train is a mini electric toy train and people take a ride just to experience the.. well.. ride :)

The train runs on dedicated tracks which also coincide with the road like a Tram. A must have experience!

I noticed a very fascinating sign on the train. Scary and fascinating at the same time. This felt like we had to expect a Tsunami once we were there. I wonder how a person sitting inside a train will patiently read these instructions if there is a 50 feet wave approaching him.

Our Airbnb was at walking distance from the station in the middle of some random alley. It was a blue building covered with some flowers and creepers. We checked in and read all the rules - the house had rules written all over the places. E.g. Remove shoes before entering, don't open the balcony, take shower when you come from the beach, maintain peace as it is a residential area, run if you see Tsunami etc. (just kidding).

We settled in and stepped out to explore the must visit places there. Err, we didn't know anything about this place except that it is a sea facing area with a connecting island (remember?). Hence we started walking in some direction (that felt good). While the entire gang stuck together, no one really knew where we were headed to so your truly took it upon him to do a status check if anyone knew where we were going. (Fun fact - No one knew).

Voila! We saw the Enoshima island! and decided to walk there. We walked and walked and took the Enoshima - Ohashi bridge to enter the island. This is when a brilliant thought struck all of us! Where do we go now?!

Spotted a lane where all the people were going so we decided to follow them (remember - when in Japan, follow the Japanese). The route led us to a famous temple entrance which we decided to completely avoid and instead followed a signboard taking us to some caves at the top of the island. Was a long climb and we were all pumped up to explore the caves that we were about to encounter. When we reached the top, we found *wait for it* *drumrolls* A garden with a light house! Will explain what happened to the caves later.

So we bought some entry tickets and sat near the lighthouse for a long time. It was 5PM and suddenly the entire place transformed to a winter wonderland! (it gets dark by 5PM). The entire place was decorated with lights and seemed like a dream. Worth mentioning the hot whiskey we had there, it did give us the warmth and the depth required to dream in those illuminated vibes!

(funfact - we never bothered to check if the caves existed). 

We got down to the mainland, back to our Airbnb and scouted the area for dinner. We found a very famous ramen place and let me tell you that was the only time we used Google translate so extensively. The waiter had a tough time understanding our vegetarian requirements and we had a tough time understanding his understanding of our requirements 😅 . Finally we gave up and decided to look for some other suitable place serving vegetarian food and guess what! We found *wait for it* *drumrolls* "Khushi Curry"! Serving Indian food (run by Nepali people again). This was the only day when we had Indian food in Japan and that too for lunch as well as dinner! Overstuffed Indian food day I must say! 

We grabbed Sake and headed back to our room and decided to plan a place to visit on Day 4 (instead of roaming aimless shameless). So we decided to go to a place called Hakone (a few of us decided and others agreed). It looked exciting on Google maps and we were all pumped up for another day in Japan and of course another night of discussions around world politics, tech and life in general :)