Kate’s Quests

DJ is on leave this week so yesterday we headed to Kamakura. Shara and I saw it together, but he hadn’t been there yet so I showed him around. We wandered the city for 5 1/2 hours. Whew! I just love the great Buddha. I took him in to see it and he took this picture. You get to see a bit lower on the base of the Buddha. If you look on the right hand side…there’s a little shack that you can pay 20 yen (about 20 cents) to go up into the Buddha. He didn’t care about going in, but it was fun when Shara and I went. We also saw a section of the place that I missed the first time in. It was just a gravel area with some more shrines and temples, but from the amount of time that she and I spent there…I thought I had seen it all. There was a little shop back there that sold more souvenirs too. There was a wide variety of people there. The Japanese of course, but we heard Italian, Spanish, German, and Chinese. I’m sure there were more, but that’s all I heard.

After the Diabutsu (great Buddha) we wandered around Kamakura and found lunch at a Yakitori stand. Meat on a stick, basically. We got a couple of sticks of chicken glazed with soy sauce. Yummy. You were looking for sushi, but found this first. Later we found that if we’d just kept walking one more block, we’d have found a sushi joint. Oh well.

Then we wandered over to the Hase Kannon temple. We didn’t go in, but found a little restaurant and had Yakisoba and Okonomiyaki. It was really yummy. I couldn’t believe how much food we got though. Good God. This was taken before we got our meal, but you can see that you have to take your shoes off and sit on the pillows on the floor to eat. We could have chosen tables and chairs, but this was way more authentic. I love that Japanese food is not particularly filling. It doesn’t give you that heavy, nasty feeling after you’ve eaten…even if you’ve eaten a bit too much. It’s just so light and fresh. I love how many veggies you get in everything.

After we ate, we walked back to the train station and along the way found a little coffee shop. I had an Affogato (ice cream drizzled with espresso) and DJ got a coffee. He then drank the espresso that I didn’t use on the ice cream. LOL. It was a cute place. We found a shrine that was extremely impressive. I just love that you would never know that these places are here, but you wander around and stumble across them. The Japanese are amazing in how they mix tradition with modernity. Amidst the bustling city there are little pockets of serenity.

After that we headed back along the tree lined median. There was traffic on either side of the pathway, but you’d never know it just walking down there. I love that too.
There were about 40 school children in front of us, all in their uniforms. You ALWAYS seen the Japanese kids in their school uniforms. It’s so cute.

After getting back to Zushi and walking back to the bottom of the stairs to the neighborhood, DJ challenged me to walk up the mountain without stopping. I usually stop about three times or so to catch my breath, so I knew it was going to suck, but I managed to pull it off. I’ll have to take pictures while walking it today, but it’s basically straight up. There are plenty of stones to make stairs and it’s beautifully wooded and green. There are lots of bamboo too. Very Japanese.