| Tara found a book called "Weekend Adventures Outside Tokyo - Travel
with a Historical Twist" by Tae Moriyama in the bookstore at Roppongi crossing
while waiting for Seth. There were lots of good sounding walks in it. We
picked the Kamakura walk to try first.
We traveled to Kamakura via the JR train. When we got off the Yamanote line in Shinagawa to transfer to the line for Kamakura, we were right outside of a cute little noodle shop tucked under the stairs in the middle of the platform - so we decided to get some not-so-traditional 4th of July food. Having lunch at the shop was alot of fun: the food tasted good and the lady serving it was very sweet. |
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| We really enjoyed getting to the Buddha. We were guided through a woods overlooking Kamakura. This woods was very nice since it was high on a hill and we had great views through the trees. There were other people on the trail, but not many. | |
| And, not surprisingly, half-way along, we happened across three vending machines and one even had our favorite - Grape Fanta. The vending machines were outside of a small temple that you could actually drive to. And here we'd been doing some scrambling up and down hills on foot! Speaking of scrambling up and down hills - if you were to walking in the woods, what type of shoes would you choose? Well, if you were a young Japanese woman - you might choose sandals with a one inch heel! Really!! We were stunned at what we saw some ladies wearing. However, only the younger women were wearing the heeled shoes. The older groups of people were decked out in the typical "hiker" outfit: boots, hat, towel and all. |  |
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We were happy to reach the Buddha and very glad we'd come via the woods.
This was the first time Seth had seen the Buddha. Tara had visited him
before, but was happy to see that for today, someone had given Buddha a
watermelon!
In addition to seeing the outside of the Buddha, we paid our 10 Yen and went inside of the Buddha's belly too. Plus, we strolled around the surrounding gardens and found a lovely area with a stream running through it. |
The Sunset on the beach
After the Buddha, we stopped at a sub shop and decided what to do next.
We opted out of the physically challenging hike over more hills to the
ocean and instead took a nice local train ride about 15 minutes South.
Once we saw the hills from the train, I'm glad we decided not to walk!
The beach was really busy with surfers and lots of people were in the water
even though it wasn't that warm out and it was getting dark. We settled
in a park up on a hill overlooking the beach. It was now that we started
to feel how we'd been walking all day!
The park was really nice. There were dogs playing on our hill! And we had a nice view of the beach and an island further down the beach. Plus, there was a higher part of the hill that Tara explored while Seth slept. Tara also looked for 4-leaf clovers and found one almost straight away. Finding Fuji was harder. We thought we could just make out the shape of Fuji's cone in the distance - but we weren't sure. As the sun set, we became more and more sure - we could just make out Fuji san. Beautiful.
After the sun set, we got moving again. This time towards food. However, all the shops along the beach front either didn't appeal to us or had a long wait. So, we boarded the local train headed back to Kamakura station. We managed to find a little Italian restaurant on the 2nd floor just outside the station and had a nice dinner before returning home.
And, speaking of memorable shoes - here's some we saw on the way home:
