Introduction

As mentioned in the previous installment, this day’s itinerary was too long, so it would be split into two parts.

For the first part, see: From 5 Centimeters per Second to Memories Off — Kuriko’s Japan Trip (3) [Bonus: Railfan Kuriko’s Ticketing Mishap]

Enough digression—let’s pick up where we left off!

Enoden Kamakurakokomae Station — Where Hanamichi Sakuragi First Met Haruko Akagi

After eating our fill, we headed back to Enoshima Station on the Enoshima Electric Railway to wait for the train.

On the platform, I spotted this notice: because Koshigoe Station’s platform is too short, the doors on the first car do not open!

Looking ahead, this is the famous stretch between Enoden Enoshima Station and Koshigoe Station, where the tracks share the road with motor vehicles.

Sometimes cars creep inside the yellow line, and the train operator has to stop and sound the horn, then wait for the driver to move out of the yellow zone before proceeding.

And then we arrived at the famous station—Enoden Kamakurakokomae Station! This is absolutely one of the big pilgrimage spots too.

Kamakurakokomae Station is also one of the stations selected for the “100 Best Stations in the Kanto Region”. It wasn’t chosen because it’s a Slam Dunk pilgrimage site, but because: ホームから前面いっぱいに「湘南の海」が広がっている駅 (a station where the “Sea of Shonan” spreads out before you right from the platform)!

See: https://japan.mania.cx/best100/kantoeki/014kamako.html

See that railroad crossing? That’s the famous scene from Slam Dunk—the crossing where Hanamichi Sakuragi first meets Haruko Akagi!

This is the exact spot—the crossing where Hanamichi Sakuragi and Haruko Akagi were destined to meet!

To be honest, driving here must be incredibly annoying for local residents—they probably worry every time they pass through about brushing against pedestrians.

PS: Spotted a fake JK—turns out the girl in the sailor uniform was unmistakably Chinese! The moment she started speaking standard Mandarin, the magic instantly disappeared!

Continuing the Memories Off Pilgrimage — Kamakura Station

Because of time constraints, Kuriko gave up the plan to visit the Great Buddha at Kotoku-in and instead rode straight to the line’s terminal, Kamakura Station (鎌倉駅 / かまくら).

Since I was already in the first car, I kept watching the view ahead and the operator at work.

A little Japanese railfan squeezed in front of me, haha!

Arrived at Kamakura Station!

After exiting the station, I took a look—this is the real-life model for Sumisora Station from Memories Off, though you need to flip it left-to-right.

Kamakura Station was also selected as one of the “100 Best Stations in the Kanto Region”. Again, it wasn’t because of its connection to Memories Off, nor because it inspired “Sumisora Academy,” but because: 多くの史跡をかかえる鎌倉の中心にあって、古都を感じさせるたたずまいの駅 (a station in the center of Kamakura, surrounded by many historic sites, with an appearance that evokes the atmosphere of the ancient capital).

See: https://japan.mania.cx/best100/kantoeki/085kamakura.html

Here’s an image of the Memories Off original.

Memories Off 6: Chisa Hakozaki & Sumisora Station!

After wrapping up the anime/game pilgrimage, the Enoden day pass had fulfilled its historic mission.

Next up was taking the JR Yokosuka Line to Yokohama. Having learned a lesson earlier from getting stuck with an Odakyu single-ride ticket and being unable to exit the station, Kuriko decided never to buy a single-ride ticket again. Instead, I bought a Suica card issued by JR East, loaded money onto it, and just tapped in directly!

This is Suica!

Before boarding, I took a photo of the Kamakura Station name sign. The Shonan-Shinjuku Line code is JS, station number JS07; the Yokosuka Line code is JO, station number JO07.

You can probably already tell that the Shonan-Shinjuku Line and Yokosuka Line run on the same tracks along this segment.

Here comes the train—had to snap one.

On JR’s Shonan-Shinjuku Line (yellow-green) and Yokosuka Line (light blue, this one here), you’ll sometimes see these double-decker oddball cars mixed into the consist, with a green clover-style emblem on the side. These are called Green Cars, and they require an extra seat fare.

PS: Green Car is basically first class... but still... the regular cars have subway-style seating!

Since Yokohama was only about twenty-something minutes away, there was no need to spend extra money for a reserved seat.

After boarding, I realized my car was a クハ (Kuha)—a car with a driver’s cab. What was going on?

Later, a local railfan expert explained it to me: Yokosuka Line trains start from Kurihama in the south, and after reaching Zushi, the section I was in gets coupled onto the rest of the train and continues north (basically meaning the Zushi–Kurihama segment runs with a shortened consist).

Kamakura (かまくら) — Kita-Kamakura (きたかまくら) — Ofuna (おおふな). Two stops later, I reached the famously subtitled location “Ofuna” — Ofuna Station!

I learned that an O with a line over it marks a long vowel... so Ofuna is おおふな, Osaka is おおさか... and later I found that Omiya is おおみや too.

If you shorten the O, it becomes something else entirely—for example, Ogawa is おがわ...

From here on, the Yokosuka Line runs alongside the Tokaido Line and the Negishi Line (which through-runs with the Keihin-Tohoku Line). Six parallel tracks, with trains in the same direction racing one another—this is a spectacular sight that’s not so easy to see back home.

This is also one of Japan’s oldest rail corridors, with more than a century of history. If you’re interested, look up “Railway Song” — there’s a Tokaido Line version. The lyrics sing the station names all the way from Shimbashi to Kobe (you can find videos on Youtube too).

Also, on this segment, Kuriko experienced the fastest non-Shinkansen train ride of the entire four days in Japan: 120km/h.

Please don’t scoff at that speed. Maybe only railfans can appreciate just how awesome it is—never forget that this is 1067mm narrow gauge. Narrow-gauge trains will always have the advantage of quick acceleration, but they also have the inherent limitation of a lower top speed.

PS1: Most of JR’s conventional rail lines use 1,067 mm narrow gauge.

PS2: When Japan built the Shinkansen, they finally figured it out and adopted the 1,435 mm standard gauge. From then on, they were no longer held back by the speed limits imposed by narrow gauge... That’s why Japan’s Shinkansen E2 series can run directly on China Railway’s 1,435 mm standard gauge tracks—the earliest CRH2 2A sets came from it!

PS3: So JR ended up with two different track gauges: 1,067 mm narrow gauge and 1,435 mm standard gauge. On top of that, the electrified sections of JR lines also use different power standards—1,500V DC, 20KV AC, and 25KV AC (which is why many passenger EMUs and freight locomotives are dual-system AC/DC and have to switch power modes at certain stations).

Yokohama

Nothing much happened on the way, and soon we arrived at Yokohama Station. It’s obviously a major station, with a huge volume of passengers boarding and alighting here.

First we exited through the JR ticket gates, then headed over to the Minatomirai Line. If you ask me what the Chinese name is... well, they write it in kana, not in kanji as “Harbor Future Line,” so what can I do?

It’s kind of like how there was a girl in Onyanko Club named Kawai Sono-ko, written as 河合その子 instead of 河合園子. I once asked a Japanese classmate why, and he said maybe her name simply wasn’t 園子, maybe there wasn’t even a matching kanji version, and besides, they probably thought it looked cool... That was when Kuriko finally realized that kana is the true essence of Japanese. Kanji came later. If you wrote Japanese entirely in kana, they would definitely understand it—though they’d probably think you were being very weird.

From Yokohama we rode to Minatomirai Station, and yep... see that? Even the station name is written entirely in kana.

Coming up out of Minatomirai, doesn’t this look familiar? It’s the Ferris wheel that shows up all the time in Detective Conan. If the story is set in Yokohama, this background is almost guaranteed to appear.

Yokohama Port.

We passed by the Cup Noodle Museum... They made a museum out of this too? I have to hand it to the Japanese.

Went in to buy a few souvenirs.

The Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse has now basically turned into a place selling all kinds of souvenirs.

The abandoned track behind the Red Brick Warehouse!

This is something every railfan knows well—the sadness of railways:

If an airport is abandoned, at least it leaves behind a pretty good road; if a railway is abandoned, nothing is left behind... it can only live on in people’s memories...

We found a restaurant for some sashimi, then got ready to head back by train to the next stop: Tokyo Tower.

Tokyo Tower

Back at Minatomirai Station, we needed a through-service train running via the Minatomirai Line, Tokyu Toyoko Line, Fukutoshin Line, and Tobu Railway.

It was the 18:31 train for Wakoshi shown on the departure board!

We got lucky and caught a train that was express on the Tokyu Toyoko Line and local on the Fukutoshin Line.

The local section didn’t matter to us. We only needed to go as far as Naka-Meguro, so on this stretch it was all express and moved really fast.

I absolutely had to take a photo of this station name—Den-en-chofu Station in Ota Ward, Tokyo (でんえんちょうふ). The old station building above is a beautiful little Western-style house. Years ago, when the Tokyu Toyoko Line still ran at ground level, it was the actual station building; after the line was moved underground, the building became a dummy used only as decoration. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to go out and see it.

At 19:01, the Tokyu Toyoko Line train arrived at platform 2 at Naka-Meguro, so we hurried off to transfer. The Hibiya Line train was already waiting for us on platform 3 and would depart at 19:03.

The Hibiya Line code is H (ひびや-Hibiya), and Naka-Meguro is the line’s starting station, with station code H01.

PS: Naka-Meguro Station is here, while Meguro Station is on the JR Yamanote Line. Please pay attention to this—Japan has a lot of stations like this. The names may look very similar, but... they definitely are not in the same place, and sometimes they’re actually quite far apart.

We got off at Kamiyacho and came up to street level. And what did I see? Tokyo Tower, which has appeared in Conan more than once!

It was such a short distance that we just walked over.

Then we saw this—Shiba Senior High School... It made Kuriko miss those high school days of wearing a seifuku...

We arrived at Tokyo Tower and bought tickets to go in.

Only the Main Deck still had tickets available; same-day tickets for the upper observation deck were already OOS.

Oh well, the Main Deck was good enough, and cheaper too.

Tokyo at night.

It was getting late, so we headed back to where we were staying. From Akabanebashi Station, we just needed to take the Oedo Line to Tochomae.

If you see this green leaf symbol, you’re in the right place: Tokyo subway.

This was the train we needed—the one via Roppongi bound for Hikarigaoka Station.

We ended up on a train with such a cute interior design. Adorable.

In the end we arrived at Tochomae and, just like the day before, came out through the same familiar exit and returned to the Hyatt Regency.

And with that, the August 4 rail outing came to an end!

Coming Up Next

The next day, Kuriko will take everyone on the JR Saikyo Line to the Railway Museum in Omiya—a paradise for railfans. Stay tuned.