Kamakura

On 2/11 Anne and I went to Kamakura. It is a small town located in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. Kamakura is known for its large concentration of shrines and temples. Having been told that it is difficult to find your way around in Japan we opted to take a tour guide. This turned out to be good advice. After a train ride we arrived in Kamakura and walked through some small residential streets which lead us to the beach. Though not much of a beach by US standards we did see one Japanese man attempt to go surfing. Since the waves did not exceed 1 inch we figured he would have a hard time. After what appeared to be aimless wondering through some more local streets we came to our first temple (or shrine – I forgot which distinguishes the two already). It was quite pretty. One of the two buildings housed 2 mobile shrines.

After a brief visit we went to the Hasedera Temple. It was at this point that the tour guide came in very handy. We walked through more local streets and took a left turn into a parking lot. This parking lot then turned into the Temple. We would never have found it on our own. The temple was built on a hill which required you to ascend a couple flights of steps to reach. At the bottom of the stairs was a small park like area. It was very beautiful (considering it is still winter time here and the flowers and trees are not in full bloom). There were a couple of small buildings where people were practicing their calligraphy (or something to that effect – once again I was not paying attention – my self appointed task on trips is to take the best pictures I can and leave Anne to learn about the details). There was also a small cave, that required you to bend in half to pass through. I assume it was some kind of shrine or other (Once again I was not paying attention – this being caused from a 50% increase in the amount of blood in my head from bending over). To make it worse, most of it was not lighted. So the goal became who can get out the quickest while still pretending to show interest and not walking into the several people all around you. On the way up to the Temple was a small area where little statues where set up in remembrance of children that had died. The Temple at the top was quite beautiful.

The next stop on the tour was a giant Buddha. In an attempt to keep this blog from getting much longer I will simply say it was BIG and move on. To our amusement we found a souvenir/ice cream shop no more than 100 feet away from the Buddha inside the Temple.

After a Japanese lunch we went to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine. Again, we would never have found it on our own. It was quite amazing. Our day ended with a walk back from the shrine and a train ride back to Tokyo.