We started off relatively early for our last full day in Japan and headed to Kamakura which I am not really sure what direction away from Japan it is. It is along the coast and I believe that it is to the east but I could be wrong. We spent a few yen on train tickets today because our JR passes had long ago expired on Tuesday.
In the Kamakura area there was a large temple that we visited that had a lot of neat little things about it. There was a landscape garden that rode up the side of a steep hill which was impressive and you could see the shoreline beautifully from some of the high points. Apparently Kamakura is a very popular spot in the summer and good weather but since it was rainy and mainly cooler it was not so crowded. There was obviously a pleasant looking beach off in the distance. There were several temple buildings, some of which had museum style exhibits and all of the buildings were extremely beautiful. There was a cemetery up on the hill as well. I don’t think we were supposed to take pictures of it but we did anyway because we weren’t sure. There is a large golden Buddha statue in one of the temple buildings but there was definitely a no photograph rule there. It was fairly impressive to look at. There was also a small cave that at times had very low ceilings and had several carved idols inside it as well. The temple area was very impressive and I enjoyed it a lot.
Not too far away was another Buddhist temple that had the second largest Buddha statue in Japan. It was a large bronze statue that was pretty much the only feature of the area but it was impressive. I think George said it was made of bronze and what was really cool is that we were allowed to enter it for a fee of 20 yen each, or about 20 cents. Inside the statue was interesting but the had roped off the stairway to get up near the head. I was disappointed with that but since it was all rain slick inside it was probably for the best.
The area was very nice. I think I would have enjoyed it even more in good weather but I liked it even with the cold and the rain. I was only wearing a short sleeve shirt over a tee shirt and I could tell a lot of the locals thought I was insane for that when all of them were bundled in winter gear. I was not really that cold but I had bought an umbrella early in the day which paid off in spades as I never got drenched wet like I could have if I had no jacket and no umbrella. We ate a few of the local snack foods which apparently are plentiful in the area as we got around and most of them were sweets type things. One seemed like a bagel filled with raisin goo that was pretty good. There was a sweet bean paste candy that was also tasty and a small dumpling type thing that was dipped in caramel sauce as well. Over all the treats were good and apparently people get a lot in the area. We also ate at a small maritime themed restaurant that served mainly Japanese style curries. I had a pork curry and enjoyed it greatly. They also had a neat Pyrex contraption to make the coffee in front of us and I liked the coffee as much as the presentation of it being made.
From there we traveled to an island a few train stops further away from Tokyo. We had to get off before the island and walk onto it first though an underground then over a bridge over the bay. The island has a popular onsen but we really on visited to see the area and warmed up with a cup of coffee or cocoa. It was pretty much already dark by the time we got there and the weather was still mainly cold and rainy so I can’t say we were able to give it as good a run through as I would have liked but we got a small taste of it anyway.
From there we took the train back to Shimbashi and I managed to buy a second suitcase because I had too much junk to take home in the one bag. This includes some stuff I had to buy for other people because they forgot to buy them before the left Japan… In any event the suitcase was sort of expensive but it hopefully will be worth it. After buying the suitcase we went to a Korean barbeque restaurant which was enjoyable. It was the first place we had to cook any of our own food at the table while we were here. The dishes were all interesting and we got a bunch of things to try which I liked most all of. It was better in general than some of the Hokkaido foods if only for the fact that they were more normal than, say, male fish sauce… From there we returned the hotel moderately late after the full day of running around in the weather and I started my initial packing to make sure I could now fit everything I brought and bought. It looks like I should be ok. Then bed and a bit of a day of sundries and minor purchases to stuff in the remaining holes in the luggage and then a return trip to the airport at 1pm. I will not be posting again until I am back home and have had at least a night’s sleep. I will have come in at around 3400 pictures taken give or take a few and I am sure it will take a bit for me to get them all posted but I promise I will as soon as I can. I will post links to each gallery by day as I get them on Kodak Gallery. I thank you for the patience in waiting for the pictures and hope you enjoy them when you can finally see them as much as I enjoyed taking them.
Anyway, that’s all until I am stateside.
Thanks
Tom
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