Photography around the Shonan Coast

Sitting along the seawall near Shichirigahama Station

This is my first entry in this blog. To begin with I’d like to share my appreciation for anyone who took the time to visit my site and then to continue and read a blog entry. This is going to be a big project for me that will take a good deal of effort. I’m looking forward to every step of that new journey and I hope you all can be a part of that and find something here you enjoy as much as I do.

I had long debated about what to start with for my first entry. To be honest there are a number of years worth of photos and projects I’ve collected while living in Japan, and as you can imagine starting off is one of the most difficult steps to take. After some deliberation I decided on talking a little bit about one of my favorite places in Japan, the Shonan Coast.

It’s located in Kanagawa Prefecture, just south of Tokyo. It’s popular and famous for a number of attractions, such as Enoshima, Kamakura, the quaint seaside train line running along the coast, and the more relaxing and slower pace of life that comes with seaside areas. It takes around an hour to get to the sea from Tokyo by various train lines, so it’s very easily accessible.

I used to live at about the halfway point and came to very frequently visiting the area on my days off from work. It wasn’t long before I fell in love with spending time around the coast, camera in hand, often a beer in the other. I got into the habit of walking from Katase-Enoshima Station, the terminus of Odakyu Line, which runs to Shinjuku Station, along the coast all the way to Kamakura, sometimes pushing as far as Zushi. Both areas have their own unique points and reasons for visiting but in my case it was the journey, rather than the destination.

One of the stops along that path was Shichirigahama, which contains a spacious parking lot that lines the beach with a sea wall. That in itself doesn’t sound particularly appealing but the area is frequented with surfers, and is a rather relaxing place to sit, take in the view of the sea, Enoshima, and if you’re lucky, Mt. Fuji in the distance. It really picks up a little later in the day when various groups of friends and couples come out to see the sunset.