Samuel Cocking Garden and Sea Candle

photo by CCRBlack · CC BY-SA 4.0

The garden is free until five; after that you pay, and that is when they light it up.

At the top of the island is the garden that a British merchant had built for himself in the nineteenth century, and planted in the middle of the garden stands a sixty-metre observation lighthouse. The thing to know is that admission works the opposite way to what you would expect: during the day you pay nothing, and you pay from five in the afternoon onwards, which is when they switch the lights on. From November to February the illumination is one of the three great illuminations of the Kantō, and those are the evenings when the island is at its most crowded.

The garden was created in 1882 by the British trader Samuel Cocking, who put in a greenhouse and tropical plants there. The observation tower, the Sea Candle, is sixty metres tall. To get up here from the bridge there is the Escar, Japan's first outdoor escalator, in three sections.

ℹ️ Open 9:00–20:00, last entry at 19:30. **The garden is free until 17:00 and costs 500 yen after that**; the Sea Candle is 800 yen extra; the Escar another 500. The combined ticket is the better deal: 1,100 yen for adults and 550 for children for garden and tower, 1,550 and 750 in the evening slot, or the 江の島1DAYパスポート at 1,550 and 700, which also includes the Iwaya caves and the aquarium. ⚠️ **The Escar only goes up**: to come down you take the stairs. Shōnan no Hōseki illumination from late November to February, with crowds at weekends.

🚉 Katase-Enoshima · 18 min walk

Sources: enoshima-seacandle.com · enoshima-seacandle.com · en.enoshima-seacandle.com · 4travel.jp

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