Even more species hunting fun in Japan: Tokyo and Enoshima.

I flew out to Tokyo at the beginning of November to begin another Japanese adventure. My fourth time visiting, it’s one of my favourite places in the world! Travelling with my girlfriend Lillian and my mate Ryan, we had all been greatly looking forward to our three week long trip. It was Ryan’s first time visiting Japan, so it was all new to him. For Lillian and I, we were revisiting places we’d been to before and a few new ones too.

Arriving quite late in the evening, we were all feeling pretty tired after almost thirty hours of travelling, so we got some snacks from a kombini near our apartment and headed off to bed soon after. The next day, we got up fairly early and had a busy itinerary planned. We visited a Samurai Ninja Museum, a pig café, Nakamise-dori and Sensō-ji temple, before continuing east on foot to visit Tokyo Sky Tree for some expansive views of the city.

A very expensive set of armour on display in the samurai ninja museum. 

As part of the experience, we got to throw some shuriken. 

The pig cafe was very relaxing and the pigs were incredibly friendly. 

Strolling up Nakamise-dori, Ryan spotted an unlikely tourist up on the roof.

Sensō-ji Temple was very busy. 

We spotted our first fish of the trip in the temple’s grounds. 

No directions necessary! Sky Tree is so tall you can see it from a great distance. 

The scale of Tokyo is utterly mind-boggling!

Afterwards, having walked all day, we put our Suica Cards to use and visited Akihabara, where we spent a couple of hours strolling around. Visiting the retro gaming floor in the GiGO building, we played Street Fighter II and downstairs, I wasted a few yen on a claw machine game. My efforts trying to win a female anime figure with enormous breasts proved futile. At that point, we all felt jet lag starting to kick in, so we decided to head back to Ueno for something to eat before calling it a night.

Akihabara is a cool place just to wander around. 

On our second full day in Tokyo, we took public transport to Wakasu Seaside Park, so that Ryan and I could do a few hours of fishing.  Lillian and I visited the fishing pier there the first time we visited Tokyo, but I failed to catch anything on that occasion. The pier was very busy, but things were quite slow and fishing little pieces of raw prawn, we weren’t getting any bites close to the bottom. There were some silver fish flashing their flanks just under the surface, so I tied on a tiny hook and baited it with an equally tiny piece of prawn. Flicking this out and letting it slowly fall through the water column perhaps wasn’t the best choice of approach, but a bit of persistence doing this produced my first fish of the trip in the shape of a Japanese sardinella. 

A set of sabiki would no doubt have been more effective, but I’d still managed to catch my first fish of the trip and also my first new species.

After a while, with not much happening, we decided to head away from the fishing pier to fish from the rocks to the southeast of it. By the start of the pier, we spotted some small rockpools and dropping a tiny piece of prawn in, we both caught a few small goby. 

I’d later discover they were fork-tongued goby.

Working our way along the rocks, we didn’t have any luck locating any other fish. It looked so promising, but seemed to be completely devoid of fish! Eventually, another angler caught a decent fish just along the rocks from us, but we couldn’t see what it was other than it was something silver. 

What’s he caught?

Frustrated, we walked all the way to the northeast corner of Wakasu, fishing for an hour or so near the North End Observatory. This wasn’t particularly productive either and to make matters worse, the bottom was very snaggy. Ryan got busted up by something bigger that took his bait and charged off around some rocks. This gave us some encouragement, but after losing a fair amount of tackle and retying several rigs, all I was eventually rewarded with was a crested grunter. 

I've caught this species before in Japan and other parts of Asia.

After persisting for a little while longer, we both agreed it was time to admit defeat and headed off to make our way back to Ueno. In the evening, we took a walk around the area, passing through Ueno Park before having some delicious yakitori and a few beers in an izakaya near Ueno Station. 

Lanterns all lit up at night, Bentendo shrine sits in the middle of Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park.

Here's to catching a few more fish!

The next day we did a bit more sightseeing, but to kick the day off, we visited a Joshya fishing tackle shop. Afterwards, we visited Tokyo Tower and then spent a couple of hours in the teamLabs Borderless digital museum.

With an incredible amount of very cool fishing tackle, it was quite hard to maintain control. Luckily, Lillian was with me to offer some support.

Tokyo Tower may not be anywhere near as tall as Tokyo Sky Tree, but it’s still an iconic landmark in the city. 

From the top deck we took in the views, including Mount Fuji to the west.

Unlike anything I've ever done before, it was sensory overload in the maze like teamLab Borderless digital museum. 

In the evening, we visited Diver City to see the huge Unicorn Gundam statue and also to visit the miniature Statue of Liberty on the shoreline nearby. Lillian and I had seen both of these before the first time we visited Tokyo, but during the day, so it was nice to see them after dark all lit up.

All lit up at night, the statue also "transformed", although the parts that moved were disappointingly minimal.

Forced perspective that Peter Jackson would be proud of. Being roughly one seventh the height of the real thing, this replica is actually not that big.

On our fourth day in Japan, we took a train south out of Tokyo to Ofuna Station, transferred to the Shonan monorail and rode that to Enoshima Station, before walking over a bridge to the island of Enoshima. Only a few hundred metres from the mainland, the island is a popular day trip from Tokyo. I suspected that the fishing might be better there too!

My first time riding on a monorail. Public transport in Japan is brilliant!

Once over on the relatively small island, we kicked the day off with a spot of species hunting from the popular fishing spot near Shonan Port Lighthouse, where a small fenced off area for fishing faces the open sea.

Dedicated fishing areas are fairly common in Japan. The railing could use a lick of paint, but otherwise a clean, safe platform to fish from for locals and visitors alike!

The fishing, as I expected, was pretty productive with bait not lasting on the hook very long before a fish was hooked, or it had all been stripped off. Sadly, the variety in the species wasn’t as good as I'd hoped, with just three species of puffer and three species of wrasse making up our catch. 

Finepatterned puffer were the most common of the three puffer species. 

Red naped wrasse were the most common of the three wrasse species. 

We both caught a few of these Cupid wrasse. 

Multicoloured rainbowfin was the third species of wrasse we both caught. 

Ryan caught a rather large red-eyed puffer. 

We also both caught a few of these brown-lined puffer too. 

Packing up for the day, we did some sightseeing around Enoshima, treating ourselves to a squid cracker on the way up through the temple to the Enoshima Candle at the top of the island. Afterwards, we walked back over to the mainland and caught the famous Enoden electric train along the coast to Kamakura. There we visited an enormous bronze statue of Buddha and enjoyed a bowl of shirasu before heading back to Tokyo again. 

This huge bronze Torii gate sits at the beginning of a busy street selling souvenirs and food to tourists. Up past this street, you can visit various shrines on the way up to the top of the island.

We couldn't resist a squid cracker, made by squeezing whole squid and some batter in a large press. They were most delicious!

At the top of the island sits the Enoshima Candle.

It offers panoramic views, including this one of the spot we had fished earlier in the day.

This enormous bronze statue of Buddha in the seated position is the centrepiece of the tranquil Kotoku-in temple.

Baby sardines over rice. Half is eaten with a wasabi and soy sauce dressing, then a raw egg yolk is added to give a completely different taste experience. Almost two meals for the price of one! We all enjoyed this meal. It turned out to be a real food highlight of the trip. 

For our final day in Tokyo, we decided to visit a few shrines, and then we spent the afternoon wandering around Ueno Zoo. The highlight for me were the aye-aye, a very strange looking nocturnal primate with large ears and very long fingers. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a good photo of one in their almost pitch black indoor enclosure. For some strange reason, none of us took any photos of the other animals either. Possibly because it was Saturday and the Zoo was incredibly busy. In the evening, we packed our bags in preparation for our flight to Okinawa the following day. Checking the weather forecast for the coming days, Ryan and I got a bit of a surprise when we discovered that rain was predicted for pretty much the entire duration of our stay there. With lots of fishing planned on the Japanese tropical paradise, this wasn’t exactly the weather we were hoping for, but we were determined to make the most of our time there.

Tight lines, Scott.