江ノ島線

Overview

The Odakyu Enoshima Line (OE) runs 27.4 km from Sagami-Ono to Katase-Enoshima in 17 stations. It leaves the Odawara Line just south of Sagami-Ono, crosses the Sagamino plateau through Yamato, and ends a short walk from the causeway to Enoshima island. It opened in one piece on 1 April 1929 — the whole route, double track from end to end, with 13 stations — and it still does the two jobs it was built for: carrying the Kanagawa suburbs towards Shinjuku, and carrying everyone else to the sea.

Some of those suburbs were Odakyu's own idea. The company planned a garden city in the woods of the plateau, the Rinkan Toshi, and named three stations after it: Higashi-Rinkan-Toshi, Chuo-Rinkan-Toshi and Minami-Rinkan-Toshi, which dropped the "Toshi" in 1941. Other stations arrived as the houses did — Sakuragaoka in 1952, Zengyo in 1960, Shonandai in 1966. Yamato opened as Nishi-Yamato and took its present name in 1944, when it became the interchange with what is now the Sotetsu Main Line, and Mutsuai became Mutsuai-Nichidai-mae in 1998.

The line's one real oddity is at Fujisawa. It enters the town from the west, where land was easier to buy, and carrying straight on to Enoshima from there would have run it alongside the Enoden, which the Ministry of Railways told Odakyu to avoid. So Fujisawa was built as a reversal: trains run in, change direction, and head back out towards the coast.

Along the route

Just past Sagami-Ono the line swings away from the Odawara Line beside Odakyu's Ono depot and runs south-east to Higashi-Rinkan, then straight through the Rinkan streets to Chuo-Rinkan, where the Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line ends. Minami-Rinkan and Tsuruma come in quick succession; the line passes under the Tomei Expressway, rises onto a viaduct, and crosses the Sotetsu Main Line at Yamato — Sotetsu in a tunnel below, Odakyu above.

South of Yamato it keeps company with Route 467 through Sakuragaoka and Koza-Shibuya, where the Tokaido Shinkansen passes under the platforms, and enters Fujisawa city at Chogo. Shonandai is the second big junction: the Sotetsu Izumino Line and the Yokohama Municipal Subway's Blue Line both arrived underground in 1999. Beyond Mutsuai-Nichidai-mae, with Nihon University's Shonan campus beside the tracks, the line dips and climbs to Zengyo, goes through its only tunnel, passes Fujisawa-Hommachi, then curves hard left over the Tokaido Main Line and drops into Fujisawa, alongside JR and the Enoden.

After reversing, the train heads south-west through Kugenuma, a villa district from the Meiji era onwards, calling at Hon-Kugenuma and Kugenuma-Kaigan before running parallel to the shore, out of sight of the water, to Katase-Enoshima. The terminus has been built to look like Ryugu-jo, the undersea Dragon Palace of the Urashima Taro story, since 1929; the rebuilt station of 2020 goes further, with dolphins on the roof and a dragon carving about 15 m long in the concourse. The Enoden's Enoshima and the Shonan Monorail's Shonan-Enoshima are a few minutes' walk away, but they are separate stations and not transfers in the game.

Why play it

Seventeen stations and a steady rhythm, with the traps spread evenly. It opens with Rinkan three stations in a row, and the middle one, 中央林間, hides the long vowels of ちゅうおう. 大和 is やまと, not だいわ. 桜ヶ丘 is written with ヶ and read が. 高座渋谷 contains a Shibuya that is not Tokyo's — 高座 is the old district name, added so the two stations could be told apart. Further south, 長後 and 善行 give common kanji unusual readings: 後 as ご, 行 as ぎょう.

The longest name on the line is 六会日大前 (むつあいにちだいまえ), 18 keystrokes, where 六 is read むつ and 会 is read あい. Then the pairs start. 藤沢本町 is followed by 藤沢, so you type "fujisawa" twice in a row — and although Odakyu's map spells it Hommachi, the ん is typed with an n. After the reversal, 本鵠沼 is followed by 鵠沼海岸, "kugenuma" twice more, with a 鵠 few people meet outside place names. The run ends at 片瀬江ノ島 with a katakana ノ: in Kanji mode, an IME that offers the island's 江の島 first will cost you the last station.