📸 A weekend in Shōnan, Part 2

2025 April 05 // Journal, Photo Walks

So much for coming back in a timely manner to upload Part 2 of our Shōnan adventure. (See Part 1 in Hiratsuka here.) It's fine! Don't worry about the date! Here is another photo walk from the beginning of March, originally posted as a series of toots on on Mastodon!

Fujisawa-shuku Festival (March 2)

Fujisawa was one of the 53 stops along the old Tōkaidō, and thus has its own shuku, or rest stop. And since it is also a sightseeing town, there is naturally an annual festival taking visitors to various spots around the city.

Lunchtime in the park

Our first stop was to our local shrine that was holding a food festival. We had mixed pork bowls and horumon (offal) in the adjoining park.

Two bowls of sliced pork coated in sauce on rice, and a small tray of fried horumon (offal)

There was a troupe of gagaku (traditional court musicians) under the trees and some stalls with food, toys, and other festival stuff.

Troupe of musicians playing flutes and drums while wearing traditional Japanese court regalia

There are also Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Benkei cosplayers walking around, since Shirahata Shrine is the resting place of Yoshitsune.

Some people dressed as samurai, and one dressed as Benkei the warrior monk and one sitting and dressed as the war hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune

We also watched this guy help a little girl design a long cloth with aizome, a traditional indigo dye that's kind of like denim.

A table of blue tie-dyed clothes, hats, and shoes. In the background is the artist table with buckets and containers of water and blue dye

Played with a bamboo toy that's kind of like a kendama but with prongs to catch a bamboo tube instead of a ball. It was quite difficult!

Person playing with a toy that consists of two bamboo tubes connected by a string, and the idea is to swing the tube up and onto the pronged other side

The Heike Drama begins

It starts!! Yoshitsune being summoned to the battlefield!

Samurai in full regalia acting out the scene where the Minamoto no Yoshitsune is summoned to the battlefield to fight against Heike

The battle begins:

Two samurai holding up longbows and miming shooting arrows

Benkei the warrior monk enters the fight!

Benkei the warrior monk with one hand in front and making a gruesome battle grimace

They recreated the Battle of Dan-no-Ura by running through the audience and leaping from boat to boat in the Shimonoseki (read: stopping at every few benches to bellow at the laughing kids). It was a lot of fun to watch.

Models at Saibikan

Next stop: Saibikan, where they have a model of the Tōkaidō and specifically the stops from Kanagawa-juku (in modern-day Yokohama) to Fujisawa-shuku.

Model along the Sagami Bay coast from Kanagawa-juku to Fujisawa-shuku

Dolls and arts & crafts at Kikyōya

Next stop is Kikyōya, an old building that used to be a shop in the Edo era, and which opens occasionally for events. Right now is the Hinamatsuri doll display:

Red layered steps filled with traditional Japanese hinaningyō, dolls recreating a royal court

The hinaningyō displays in the background and a person flipping through history books in foreground

Normally the back areas of Kikyōya are closed off, but today they were open... time to explore!

Person walking around the back of a building. The hallway is lined with dangling hinamatsuri decorations

We were greeted with another large hinaningyō display and a garden decked out in cute, hand-made papercrafts and paintings from people in the community:

Another gorgeous display of hinaningyō dolls on red steps, surrounded by hanging decorations and other beautiful things

The garden around back that has paper ornaments and painted banners strung up among the plants

Colorful paper ornaments like flowers and butterflies dangling off of a large tree in the garden

There were also a couple of tables to make your own papercraft decorations. We made our own hanging origami hinaningyō:

Two hinaningyō origami figures hanging from a red string, with a pink tag at the bottom reading "Hinamatsuri" in ink

Pay no attention to my squished hiragana handwriting...

Pit stop at Kōryūkan

Next stop, Kōryūkan! First things first: collect our Hinamatsuri stamp!

Red stamp showing the Kōryūkan building in background and hinaningyō dolls in foreground, with "ohinasama meguri" underneath

Got our "spring" stamp! They have a different stamp for every season.

This place always acts as a small Fujisawa-shuku museum all year long, which is very neat. I always love looking at this town model and trying to imagine what this place looked like a century or two ago.

Wooden model of the town around the Sakai River area in Fujisawa from the Edo Era

This model shows the town surrounding the Sakai River in the Edo Era, and the road leading up to Yugyōji, the large Buddhist temple just up the road from Kōryūkan.

There is also a table where they are showing kids how to print ukiyoe, which is an event that is usually done at the ukiyoe museum in Tsujidō. I couldn't get any pictures of the table because there were so many excited kids doing it, which was very heartwarming and fun to see.

Hinaningyō displays and hanging hinamatsuri decorations. On the left is a crowd of children at a table doing ukiyoe printing

Trailing off

Just up the road from Kōryūkan is Yugyōji, the main temple in town. They apparently had a rakugo event going on. Unfortunately we had to skip that since we had other errands in town, but it sounds incredibly fun and I wish we'd had the chance to go.

As we were walking through town, we'd peek into the windows of shops and salons and see glimpses of hinaningyō displays. It reminds me of when we were living in northern Niigata, the next town over from us (Murakami) had this annual Hinamatsuri meguri (walking tour) where people would open their HOUSES for folks to come in and see their private hinaningyō displays. You're definitely not going to see that level of inaka here in Kanagawa, but it was still cool to see something similar.

And that was the end of our Shōnan weekend adventure! If you ever come to Japan, please make sure to visit all the funky little local festivals because those end up being some of the most fun. See you soon with more pictures, hopefully!! 👋