Kamakura and Enoshima

After a day of "recharging" yesterday, Mike and I woke up early this morning and headed to Kamakura and Enoshima, two towns next to each other on the beach.  Mike had been there before two years ago with a co-worker, and wanted to show me around.  The train company does a "free pass" for about $15 a person, which gets you from Tokyo to Enoshima, unlimited rides from Enoshima to Kamakura, and then back to Tokyo.  We got to Enoshima and jumped on the train to Kamakura to try to beat the crowds.  Between 1185 and 1333, Kamakura was the capital of Japan.  After the capital was moved to Kyoto, the town became basically a fishing village. It wasn't until the railway was built out from Tokyo that it became a popular town for tourists and for people looking to escape the city.  It's a one hour train ride from Tokyo, so not too bad.  Anyways, we caught the train from Enoshima to Kamakura, which took us right along the ocean:

The trains were all PACKED, with a guy who came around to push people in as the doors were closing.  We finally got to Kamakura, and came to the main shopping street.  It was really cool! There were little gift shops and street vendors everywhere, selling all sorts of things.

 We were starving, so we ducked into a little restaurant, which ended up being a chinese restaurant.  I got the set lunch, which included the soup below.  It was fantastic! It was basically like chicken noodle soup.  It also came with fried rice, which I forgot to take a picture of.  I wasn't so crazy about the dessert, which is below the soup.  It was like a milk flavored jello that had two pieces of canned fruit on top...I didn't eat much.

My book told me that we had to look for a purple ice cream cone sign, and try the "sweet potato ice cream",  It sounded weird, but when else are you going to get to try something like that?

We each got a cone, and they were SO GOOD! It tasted just like Thanksgiving sweet potatoes.  We were both pleasantly surprised!

 Kamakura has something like 9 temples, so we had to pick and choose what we wanted to do.  We decided to go to the Hasedera Temple,  mostly because it was close to the train station.

Here's Mike, looking Zen:

There were so many beautiful gardens and blooming hydrangeas and irises everywhere.

 Once you got to the top of the temple, you could see the ocean!

 These were incense sticks, which you were supposed to waft towards you to ward off evil spirits:

 Here's the picture I illegally took inside the temple...it was a giant gold statue...sorry the picture didn't turn out better!

Not sure what this was, but according to that sign, it was some sort of bookshelf.  It had it's own house!

More views of the hills full of flowers:

Bamboo! Whenever I see it, it reminds me of Lost. Ha!

Some Buddha footprints...mostly I loved the little kid playing by them!

Cute, right???

When we were walking up one of the flights of stairs, we were handed a flyer thing that had the number 390 on it.  When we got to the top, we realized that would be our spot in line if we wanted to walk further up the mountain to see the flower garden, which apparently is in bloom right now.  As you can see below, they were only on 379, and there was 15 minutes in between each number.  So we would of had to wait about 3 hours to get up there...we opted out.

We headed through what seemed to be a cemetery, and stumbled upon a giant bell

These little buddha statues were everywhere:

I loved these bamboo shoot water spouts:

Coy fish! Not nearly as big as the ones I saw before, but still pretty:

Some votive tablets:

We went inside this cave, which had candles and carvings into the side of the cave everywhere:

Then, we got to a part of the cave that had these tiny little buddhas everywhere:

Mike was getting claustrophobic, it wasn't quite made for people his size!

There were little streams everywhere, which usually led to a fountain or to a pond with coy fish, or to a waterfall.

After we left the shrine, we headed to Daibutsu, which is the second biggest Buddha statue in Japan.  On the way, there were all sorts of street vendors selling food.  We stopped at one that was selling these rice dumplings that were coated in a sweet soy sauce with sesame seeds.  It was strange, but definitely delicious!

Then, we got to Daibutsu, which had this big wall up so that you had to pay to see it! I guess there used to be structures around it, covering the buddha, but they have been washed away in various tsunamis and typhoons, so now there's just this wall.

Mike bought the tickets, and we headed in to meet Buddha!

There was a washing station as you got in, which is the same thing that was at the shinto temples I've been to

First view of Buddha! he was pretty big!

Here was an offering to him.  Watermelons are a pretty big deal here, and can go for anywhere from $10 to $300...so I think this was probably a pretty spendy watermelon.

No, those aren't wings...you can go inside the Buddha, so there are vents in the back!

We waited in the line to get inside...and then our camera battery died.  Luckily we had the iphone.

Here's me..waiting in line, trying to figure out the iphone camera.

No clue what these were, but they were surrounding the Buddha.

It was a tiny little entryway and stairway to get into the Buddha...it was very cramped, especially for us giant Americans.

Here's the inside....you had to pay 20 yen to get in, which is about 2 cents, so at least it wasn't a huge let down.

There was some information about how it was built, but I was so hot and anxious to get out into the fresh air that I just snapped a picture and moved on.  It didn't really turn out!

Finally, we were free!  The last thing we stopped by was this pair of giant slippers, which were made for the giant Buddha.

Ok, I was trying to get a picture of what this lady was eating.  It looks like she's holding a sheet of paper, but in fact, it's a squid.  how do they get a squid to look like a sheet of paper, you might ask?  Well, they squeeze the fresh squid between two hot flat grills, and then clamp the grills shut.  What results is a hot-pressed squid, with most of the moisture removed.  The squid makes a ton of sizzling and popping sounds and steam is everywhere as it's pressed.  Pretty gross, right?  These little shops were everywhere.

The train stations were all packed:

Here's a picture of a packed train...you can see most of the people are pressed up against the glass, and the people who are sitting practically have other people on their laps.

We took the rain back to Enoshima, and headed to Enoshima island.

A long bridge led to the island, which you can see below:

When we got to the island, there was a main drag leading through town and to one of the main Shrines.  I know, ANOTHER shrine! Crazy.

There were so many steps.  So. Many. Steps.  They each led to another tier, which had a different thing to see.

Finally, we got to the shrine. People were waiting in line to pray, and they all passed through that circle of leaves below.

View from halfway up, and a close-up of some "love votives" that people left for the gods:

Did I mention there were a lot of steps??

More shrine:

We finally got to the top, and this juggler was performing.  He had a pretty big crowd around him, and for good reason...he was great!

We got to the top and I was pretty cranky...just ask Mike.  I had no idea it was going to be that much of a hike, and after we had hiked all over Kamakura and it was very humid... I was a major Negative Nancy. Plus, the altitude seemed to be affecting my asthma, which made it all worse.  Luckily, Mike knows just the thing to perk me up... Beer and a nice view! He hooked me up with a beer and a nice table to gaze at the ocean. It was fantastic!

Ok, here's a picture of them frying the squid...they were doing it here, too...the line to get one was crazy long! There was NO ONE in the beer and ice cream line, and the line for the squid paper was 30-40 people long.  Extremely strange.

See, there, what she has in the tongs??? That's a squid.  It's about to become paper thin.

We moved on, and found this Buddhist temple, which was just built in the 90s.

We found this little cove.

We wanted to go to this tower, but you had to pay more to go up that...and we decided that since it was cloudy and we wouldn't be able to see much that it wasn't worth the money.  So we headed back, and ran into this cat.

Then, there was a new juggler, who was balancing on all of this stuff...it was crazy! We watched him for awhile, then headed home. All in all, it was a fun day! We took the train home, and ended up having a nice relaxing night in.