Last Sunday we went to 江の島, the island of the dragon. It's an island in the Tokyo bay. It took us one hour and a half to get there. We first went to eat something before actually walking to the Island taking the bridge. We then walk up to the temple and decided to do a tour of the island. It's not very big so you can easily do it in few hours. There are some temples to see with interesting statues. We went to the bell of the loving dragon and ringed it together (killing our ears).
The story said that :
"The villagers of Fujisawa were plagued for a period of a thousand-some years by a destructive, five-headed dragon that had its lair in a nearby lake. Aware of their suffering, on May 31, 552 A.D., the goddess Benzaiten caused the island of Enoshima to arise from the bottom of the bay to serve as her abode. She then descended onto the island amidst a series of spectacular terrestrial and aerial phenomena. The dragon fell in love with the beautiful goddess and asked her to be his consort. Benzaiten, who was widely known for her persuasive eloquence, rejected the dragon's proposal and made it understand that it had been doing wrong by plaguing the villagers. Ashamed, the dragon promised to cease its wrong-doing. It then faced south (devotedly facing the island where Benzaiten lived) and changed into a hill. To this day, the hill is known as Dragon's-Mouth Hill (Japanese: tatsu-no-kuchi yama 龍の口山)"(from here)
It is also said that the Dragon and the godess finally get married and people are now sealing their love at the bell of the loving Dragon. That's why we can see a lots of padlocks there.
We then went back along the beach and decided to stay swimming for a bit. There were a lot of people. The water was really warm and salty, that was a great bathe.
Travel table of content
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