Today we took a day tour from Tokyo to visit some temples and sites in the Kamakura area. (To be clear - this is our first post from Japan, as we just walked around on our first day. We’ll post on that later this week just before we join the OAT tour).
Our first adventure today was to get to the tour meet-up. We had to travel across the city at rush- hour. Fortunately, we had been on the subway the day before - it was super easy - except we took the wrong exit - which meant we had to walk FAST for 10 minutes to catch the bus!!
As we headed out of town, we enjoyed the views of the harbors (many of them) along the coast. Miles of ports and containers. Wow!
Around 11, we arrived at the Shinto temple honoring Tsurugaoka Hachiman, a shogun in the 13th Century. In addition to the temple, there were smaller shrines,lots of big red gates, ponds, bridges, etc., on the temple grounds. We learned the proper way to wash your hands at the temple entrance, and walked all the way to the top (many stairs!)
We spent an hour wandering around the shopping area of Kamakura town - a brush shop, a wood shop, a pastry shop, a pigeon cookie shop and a long lovely wooded path down the middle of the Main Street. Then back to the bus.
Next we visited the Hasedera Buddhist temple. This site had many beautiful gardens, with lush foliage, small ponds, lovely trees and flowers, which were a joy. There was also a cool cave, some koi ponds and lots of other stuff. This place was the highlight of the trip for us.
We also visited the Great Buddha - supposedly the biggest Buddha in Japan - built in the 12th century. It is bronze, and really big, and hollow (you can go inside - but I’m not sure why you would want to).
Our last stop was the Island of Enoshima, home to lots of restaurants and shopping as well as a famous Shinto shrine perched so high up the mountain that we were too tired to climb all the way up. We exhausted ourselves reaching one of the many other shrines half way up, and enjoyed wonderful views back towards the mainland.
We had a long ride back to Tokyo to rest. Then we stopped and picked up some dinner - and headed into the Shibuya subway station at the peak of evening rush hour. Wow - that was intense! We got to our stop without a hitch and only got a little bit wet in the rain on the way to our hotel.
What a great day!
What an exhausting full day. It looks like most of the day you had great weather!
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