Whew okay I am behind on write-ups for a couple of things. But for now I want to write about Kamakura, which I went to last weekend with friends. Kamakura is a town about an hour outside of Tokyo. We were originally planning to stay overnight, but as everyone was too busy we ended up just doing a day trip. It was amazing though, I loved it - I wish I'd discovered it earlier!
The full set of photos is here. Some of my favorite photos, Kamakura was GORGEOUS.
Anyway. We got in around 10:30 or 11 in the morning, and after hopping on the cute streetcar-like Enoden train we headed off to see the Daibutsu, the second largest Buddha statue in Japan. On the way, we saw a sign for Hase Kannon Temple, and stopped there first. This is probably my favorite part of the trip. It was a beautiful, beautiful Buddhist temple. Much of Kamakura was more tropical-looking and covered in green, and Hase Temple has a beautiful garden, plus a walkway up the mountain/hillside covered with thick hydrangea bushes and other flowers, as well as bamboo trees. It had a lot of levels, and you got a great view of the ocean and the surrounding mountains/hills. It also had a cave full of little statues, that was very dark and very low and gave the tall German kid in our group some trouble. Overall, it was just so green and incredibly peaceful. Probably my favorite place that I've been to in Japan.
View of Kamakura
There were a lot of these cute states
Not entirely sure why these statues have bibs.
Next, the Daibutsu. Great big Buddha! An older Japanese man stopped to tell me I had a beautiful Japanese accent; he thought I might have been a natural speaker at first. :) That made me smile.
It was incredibly hot and humid, so we stopped for ice cream (mmmm, cassis ice cream) before heading off to another temple. I can't actually remember this one's name. Anyway, it had beautiful decorations up for tanabata (a festival on the 7th day of the 7th month, though most of the celebrations aren't actually until August, sadness) and a small inari shrine. We also ran into an Amish restaurant. In Japan. Wait, how did the Amish get to Japan?? Aren't planes...? We were so confused, but it was more of a cafe and we didn't go in to see if they were actually Amish people.
Crowd of people in front of the shrine, along with tanabata decorations
Inari statue
AMISH COOKING
Following that temple, we originally intended to do a hike and see yagura (tomb caves) along the way. However, when trying to find where the trails began, we found out that the hike actually takes about 3 hours, instead of what we thought would be 1-1/2 hours, and was quite dangerous. So we went off to find another temple that had them. They sounded really cool - exploring caves! Ooh! Unfortunately, after a forty minute or an hour walk to get to the small, out-of-the-way temple, we found it was less than enthralling. They turned out to be a hole in the cliffside, that went in about 6-10 feet. Well... it looked kind of cool from the outside at least. We sat around that temple for a little bit recovering from the walk and the hot, sticky weather, disappointed by the not-caves, but it was another beautiful spot at least.
It looked cool from the outside... This one was empty. Another, smaller one had miniature torii gates inside and a small shrine.
We took a long walk back, stopped at another small... temple? Garden? We weren't sure what it was, but it was very pretty. And also mosquito-infested. Despite spraying my legs with bug spray every hour or so, I got bitten over a half-dozen times and UGH Japanese mosquitos are worse than the ones back home! Anyway, we grabbed some ramen for dinner, picked up snacks, drinks, and fireworks (hanabi) and headed for the beach.
The previous few days were grey and rainy, but we ended up with a perfect day. It was sunny and if hot while exploring temples, it was at least great on the beach where there was a good breeze. Japanese beaches aren't terribly nice, but we spread out a blanket and started drinking, waiting for dark to set off fireworks (as it was the 4th of July and the couple of other American girls and I thought it would be fun). We saw a kitty on a leash stalking a pigeon at the start of the beach, talked, watched the huge number of dogs on the beach, and took a lot of pictures. We also soon saw the reason for a sign saying "beware of hawks" - a huge one swooped down on three Japanese teens, flying between two of them, to grab something from one girl's hand as she started shrieking and jumping away from it. Damn. I would've expected that from seagulls - oddly enough, there weren't any on the beach - but a hawk?? Wow.
Sunset was not quite as exciting as we hoped - got a few big dark clouds around that time - but it was still quite a sight and once the sun went down we set off sparklers and one larger firework. A few other people on the beach did the same.
Friends :)
Sunset
So yeah. That was an amazing trip. :) And I don't want to leave Japan, I want to do more traveling...
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